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Step(s) to the Dance.


























It's an oxymoron to write about dance, about movement, about bodies; because no matter the motion taken for the hands and the shoulders to write (or type), the body sits still, largely motionless. It's even a more surprising oxymoron to research with dance, to make dance and motion your research partner; abstracts, thoughts, papers, results, all end up written down on document forms. Slowly your dancing fades away, your body aches, your expression feels betrayed and captured.

But yet, in these awakening moments that movement flows back through your body, consciousness grows fast; faster than usually. Touch replaces the senses back to their initial moment of birth, and as the body tires soon enough, having lost its confidence, you are grasping for breath, and when you catch it and balance again, you are starting over. 

And over and over again, eyes closed and confidence regained, you relive the first time you created another you, and other thoughts, other universes. In where you find yourself, between the world and rehearsal, experimentation, play and transcendence, there you exist in an alternative space; more sensuous, more personal, more creative.

None of these can be put on paper. None of these described here reach the experience; they barely attempt to. Dance is a constant transition. You can become another only when your feet touch naked the floor and later the body collapses onto it as it falls into the arms of a friend. And you become another; bits of the floor, bits of the mirrors, bits of your co-dancers, bits of your movements previously unexplored.  

As another you, all your discovered "yous", you know it is not enough to write, or your hard congregated diversity will stop breathing, stop moving, will abandon the senses. Dance is a transition, though. Once it starts with you, you never get back to who you were. It is a case of fortunate loss. Loss of a rigid self and body posture. Loss of conventions and expectations. You find yourself dancing in your walk along the street and writing on mirrors. You are in transition; you become beautifully unpredictable.  


Photo: Rehearsal and creating an alternative space, Art Factory Creative Group, Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, 14/06/2016 @ Eleni Kotsira. 

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