Whether we dance on land or water, the music is the same

It could be one of those days when I feel directionless in my work. Or powerless in the smoke of raging fires that sprout from the forests like red cacti. I may be adrift, but when I enter that room and begin to let the music move me, I am like a planet without orbit that has suddenly found a sun.

Ten, sometimes twenty of us gather barefoot each week in a room with wooden floors. Some faces are familiar, some not. Together, we journey through the five rhythms: flowing...staccato...chaos...lyrical... stillness...

As the dance deepens the walls become mirrors reflecting the music – shifting scenes of crystal starry beaches, Himalayan peaks, Moroccan bazaars, gnarled tree forests, sweaty dancehalls, Hawaiian waves. Tonight I gather old selves. Those parts of me that were asleep in corners and have suddenly been dragged to their feet. The me of 90’s London love dove raves strutting in platforms and multicolour flares, the me of smoke-hazy dub nights – Jah Rastafari! That fresh young ballerina arabesqueing to Hooked on Classics in her nightie in Fresnaye. A black-clad headbanger in the dinge of the Slimelight’s witching hour. Eva Luna swinging her hips to salsa in some latin beach bar, in Quito’s tequila-fuelled nightspots or pounding out that dudup beat with Nostalgia Steel Band in the carnival streets of Notting Hill. Wherever I move my feet, especially where the lingo is foreign and undecipherable, dance is my translator.

Barranquilla carnival, Colombia 1997

Still moving, I become those selves that I have not yet been, or maybe once was in a realm beyond memory’s reach. A Thai temple dancer, a bead-bedecked Swazi virgin offering to the Rain Queen, a Japanese Taiko drummer beating my gong with martial precision...Is this me? Who is dancing this dance? Who is moving my body because this feels like more than just self.

Next we pay homage to the animal kingdom with roars of fury and snakelike gyrations. We crawl on the ground, we track, we hunt, we prowl. We yowl like wildcats. This room no longer has four walls!

Flowing in roundness, smooth sculptural curves, like painting with our bodies. Staccato like a hip-hop rude boy like a tantrum child like a dancefloor Mafioso : I hold you to ransom. Chaos! Short circuit, pure madness. RAW. I vomit out with movement all I have held in my body. Nothing is sacred in the jaws of chaos. Lyrical like a monkey’s wedding. Surprise gifts from the skies. I am a child in Eden.

Liberation! Sweat washes away all traces of pain, loss, confusion and sorrow from deep in my pores. Again I am reborn. Again I am renamed.

I dance out my troubles. I dance the longing for a lover I can no longer touch. I dance the anger at all I cannot control. I praise all that is beautiful. I hold all that is precious. In my footsteps are messages in morse code, in my gestures all my stories are told. And when we connect in this room, for a portion of time, you share it all with me. I am no longer alone but just another colour in this ever-changing kaleidoscope of dancers.

And then it all implodes. Particles condense and fuse into one pinpoint of silence, the eye of the storm. Stillness. We slow down. Some remain standing, moving with the half presence of elders lost in senile dreams. Many lounge on the floor, furling and unfurling limbs, as the last of the song ebbs through us, leaving our skins. Saturating the earth with dreams, hopes, memories, visions. Set free from the musty pockets of mind where they sat for so long. I am curled in the cocoon of stillness. Scorched by ecstasy’s cool fire.

So when the music’s over, turn out the lights.

For more info on 5 rhythms dance visit:

http://www.gabrielleroth.com/

http://www.5rhythms.co.uk/

For dance on the Garden Route email samanthabrauer@gmail.com