Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

In this post: Dancing Five Rhythms & Movement Medicine

Coming soon: Jubilations part two, Poetry group, Prometheus

 

   Five Rhythms

Alice took me along to some of these dance classes recently. I was a bit aghast at her choice of attire. So garish. So sixties. It seemed to confirm all my worst fears.

And when we got there, I really couldn't see much at all from my vantage point on the floor, let alone take part...

But then this kind lady gave me a ride on her wheelchair. My goodness me: wasn't she a brilliant and graceful dancer! And she could twirl those wheels about like nobody's business.

(In fact, she gave us a lift home afterwards, and she's a mean driver as well, twirling those wheels about too. But very safe, I hasten to add, just in case she's reading this...)

The whole class was a big surprise to me. There were dancers there from sixteen to sixty, all shapes and sizes, all sexes. [Vera says I mean "all genders" or "all sexual orientations".] A bit pompous, isn't she? I mean all sorts of people were getting on with each-other and enjoying dancing together.

The next time I felt Alice was far more suitably dressed for the occasion. Rather fun, in fact. We also went in the daytime, so I could see better from a perch in the window.

Note the water bottle - humans get very thirsty dancing about and it's important for them to stay hydrated. Not a problem I experience, myself.

 And bright colours seemed to be the order of the day with quite a few of them. So I needn't have worried about Alice sticking out like a sore thumb. (Another of your bizarre human expressions.) They didn't mind posing for a photo, either. See me, between the feet of the woman with the amazing leggings?

One woman who sported magnificently flamboyant hues even asked to be photographed.

And I really liked this guy's "Catch 33" T-shirt. Get the reference? Brilliant movie. Hilarious and horrifying.

(I'm afraid Alice couldn't crop his head, without losing me as well, so she did her best with some pixellation.)

Now I have to admit it wasn't at all "wifty-wafty" like I'd imagined. Gabrielle Roth called it Five Rhythms because there are five rhythms. After some stretching and warming up, and moving different "Body Parts" about, they start off with Flowing, which is slow, as though moving in treacle - like the three sisters in the Dormouse's tale (not 'tail'!) Then they get faster and more jerky in Staccato, and work themselves up into a shaking, sometimes frenzied Chaos. Where they all find the energy, young and old alike, is beyond me. But Alice says it's not like suddenly running for a bus and getting out of breath: if you build up gradually it's quite easy. After that there's my favourite part, Lyrical, which is much lighter and can be a bit floaty. Finally they slow down altogether and relax into Stillness.

All along the teacher plays a super selection of different music to go with the rhythms, and makes suggestions about dancing in pairs (or not) or making your movements more expansive, or faster or slower, or breathing more deeply, and so on. Very helpful. I'm afraid I wasn't able to do much of that, but I enjoyed seeing the others. Some of it was truly beautiful.

Afterwards a number of us went along to the local Farmers' Market, in search of spicy lentil soup. Yummm...

I really enjoyed myself that day. I finally understand why there are those "Waves" on the iPod!

What's more, there was still Movement Medicine to come.


Movement Medicine

Odd name, in my personal opinion, but apparently nothing to do with GPs or the NHS.
[Oh, let me explain. Alice]

The founders, Susannah and Ya'Acov, originally trained in Five Rhythms, and have more recently added other elements to it, especially shamanic practices. As they themselves say: It is grounded in 25 years of study and practice in a variety of healing and transformational modalities including 5Rhythms™, shamanic healing, voicework and music, gestalt psychotherapy, long-term work with Helen Poynor, Suprapto Suryadarmo and may other gifted teachers. They add that it's still evolving. This is their lovely logo on the right.

You can see still more details about the core concepts on their hand-out.

When you go to a class - well, how can I explain?

The whole space is transformed by these Altars.

Vera says that's a word with unfortunately limited Christian connotations, but did you know it originally meant "a place of sacrifice"?

That's Air (to the North) on the left above, and Earth (to the South) on the right. Below is Water (to the West) on the left; the Phoenix or the mysterious Fifth Element (at the Centre) in the middle, and Fire (to the East) on the right. They are slightly different each time, and sometimes one or other of the dancers will make an installation.

Alice wants me to tell you she did the Air and Water ones here. She found it a very creative experience, and a number of charity shops benefitted from her search for items. (Actually, an awful lot was sitting about in her rather untidy flat, but she won't thank me for telling you that.)

Suffice it to say, the atmosphere at a Movement Medicine class is pretty magical. The dancing is fairly similar to Five Rhythms, but the teacher adds various interesting exercises (both physical and psychological) to try out. Don't worry though, it's nothing too scarey, and everything is optional. In fact I had to opt out most of the time.

I feel like I'm running out of energy for today - that was a terribly long blog, and we had to stop for lunch in the middle, or my typist would have gone on strike. So, see you next time...

Postscript
I forgot to add that there aren't any steps as such to learn. It's all improvised. In that way it is a bit like the old Music and Movement some of the more senior ones amongst us did at school. Which is great for people who really like to do their own thing. (Especially Aquarians.) And more difficult, I suppose, for those who prefer to have some kind of script for their activities.