These are the words that form my new solo, Rituals of Faith and Imagination.
Here’s the trailer to it:
Here I was last Navaratri, helping clean the kalari in preparation for the annual kalari puja that falls on the final three days of the festival. With my move from Kerala back to the West, this Navaratri is a much less communal affair, a solitary, internal practice.
I was thinking of Sarawati’s vac in rehearsal this morning. Since my return from India at the beginning of the year, I have been developing a solo, drawing on my time at the kalari. In between and part of the elements of ritual are nine words, from two inspirations. It was only after they’d been chosen it occurred to me that the number nine is considered auspicious.
HOPE LOVE FLOW PASSION SOFTNESS SEA KINDNESS EARTH GRATITUDE
These nine words and fifty two letters have become a major part of my life since last spring.
An imaginary grid holds the letters in space and the game of the solo is to trace them exactly, in their various predetermined weavings.
The words may not be Sanskrit but they have weight. I remember Carlos, my yoga philosophy teacher, talking of Saraswati’s gift of vac, the weight and power of words. The resonance of these nine has shifted and deepened over the months I have been dancing them. I don’t understand quite what they mean. I just know that each time I dance them, I come out feeling different: cleaner, stronger, purified somehow.
When I went to India for my first long adventure in 2009, a lot of people expressed surprise that I, supposedly a yogini, wasn’t going to study asana (postures). I went to study philosophy and meditation, to make dance and learn kalari. For me, there has never been a real differential in these practices. Practice is practice, be it my yoga on my mat, aikido in Swansea, kalari in Kerala, sitting meditation or dancing what comes out of all of it.
Practice is
practice.
This solo has been perhaps the deepest
practice of them all. There’s a
simplicity and purity in turning up, regularly and alone, to dance it, whether
my body is aching or energised, whether I’m feeling optimistic or broken
hearted, whether I’m lethargic or enthusiastic.
The words are hidden in the solo, known only to me. But I wonder what moves the watchers.
From Lucy, with love.
COMMENTS ( 1 )
posted on 19 December at 20:22
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