Dancers hanging out with dancers…my people!
It was so wonderful to spend some quality time in Hell’s Kitchen having lunch with Rie and Satoshi at their home surrounded by Satoshi’s artwork. binbinFactory! They are a magical two member dance company and my dear friends.
We spent two years meeting up every week in a studio separate from our own projects just to improvise and have fun challenging each other athletically and creatively to such magical effect. We never knew what we were going to do when we would meet up in the studio but were always delightfully surprised when we would look back at the video footage. Such happy dance making just to feed our souls. No ego or lower vibrational energy of needing to prove anything, just an elevated space to feed off each other creatively. That studio closed in June. I hope we find another space where we can continue these romps in 2025. In the meantime, we have a beautiful kinship and friendship that blossoms each time we meet. Satoshi gifted us with two fuji apple trees he grew from seeds. I am going to take them to New Rochelle to be planted at Amma’s ashram where I know the gardener and they can thrive beautifully by the Long Island sound.
Like I said, magical.
Anyone who knows me, knows I hate napping. I was the 4 year old in school who put her head on her desk and only pretended to sleep. I love Taijichuan Chen style but it absolutely kicks my butt every time. It is such a beautiful form. After training with Shifu and biking back home this poor girl has to eat and then recline on a foam roller! Can you say fascia?! We are experiencing some of the last truly warm halcyon days here in NYC. Shifu told us to get ready and prepare because we will be training outside later this week so we can run through a whole Chen sequence. I love it so much. I will not be able to walk two days afterwards. It is what we athletes call “DOMS”…Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. Yay! I am not sure how I am going to integrate the kung fu and other gifts Shifu-Shifu is teaching us into Beauty in the Qi’s last two movements but it is going to happen!
Beauty in the Qi
This dance project is an opportunity to share the path from intellect to wisdom.
When we are younger we are rewarded for acquiring skills and knowledge, cataloging it, bragging about it, exploiting it. If we are not careful, this path can lead to vanity, carelessness, delusions, poor choices and suffering – even if you are loving and kind. Only later did this dancer realize that awakening was meant to be my path. The opportunity to face the shadow side, delusion – maya. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom requires a lot of letting go, compassion, fortitude and love. Lifetime after lifetime until the moment comes when you finally escape samsara – the wheel of birth and death and birth and death. So for the brief moments we are together, I do not want to just entertain the audience, I want to inspire them to reconnect to Self, their true nature, innate happiness and real power. Through the ancient gateways of Qigong, Wushu and dance, I believe and practice Movement as Medicine. Thank you Grandmaster Chen for all of your patience and guidance with this dancer.
"The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star
but to go one's way in life and working unerringly,
neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause."
- Gustav Mahler
