Dancing oohh dancing...

Curses drat and damnation, gnashings of teeth and renting of clothing, I have no photographic evidence of my time as a dancer! The time when I had a waist! When I was so slim I was able to dance in a cropped top! The time when I wore a skirt which would now no longer cover my midriff! A time when a colleague said of me, 'if you get any thinner you will fall down a drain!'. Nights of bliss, the ecstasy of dance! (JC has banned me from putting photos of him on this blog, but I'm hoping this sepia toned one from the distant past will be suitably unrecognisable. I don't recognize myself. )

'Can you believe it?' I said to B, pondering the photo of Viktor the Cat, 'Can you believe that I ever had such a life, that I danced with such a man?'

'No' said B.

The only photo I have is of my folk dancing years, but it just isn't the same. The Bulgarian socks, the shoes, the weighty wool...

I've been reading a book called 'Entering the Circle' by Olga Kharitidi (real name Yahontova). I've also had a look at her website, (www.cliffhousepublications.com) which appears to in the process of being born. Olga makes the point that trauma makes us weep and wail and rent our clothing because we know we will never be the same again.

The trick is to ask,

'what will I become now?' and not to focus on what we once were.

Dancing has become for me something that happens once a year, twice if I am lucky, at Ceroc Chilterns, Berkhamsted Town Hall. Here is the true story of what happened at this dance on Christmas Even, 2006...most interesting. (www.cerocchilterns.co.uk/)

Easily Lead
I danced. Our dance was a loosely woven fabric, with a number of artistic holes and knots . I like this, I’m a lover of the arts and crafts movement, but for lovers of fine fabric…sigh. My dance partner didn't look too happy.

‘What style was that?’ I asked, after I had thanked him.

‘No idea. I was trying to work out what you were doing.’

‘Well I was trying to work out what you were doing’ I said hotly, to his departing back. He was a bit of a rude git.

‘That’s what happens when you put two people together and both of them don’t know what they are doing’ I said, to myself this time, as my ex-dance partner had gone off to find someone who was easier to manage.

Immediately afterwards I was clasped to the bosom of a man who looked like a white globe lamp on a black stand. From neck to shoe he was dressed in black, his head was a perfect sphere, devoid of hair and gleaming white.

I knew from his demeanor that he was not going to indulge me in any of my favourite dance misbehaviours, such as:

Queening about like a transvestite with a feather boah
Interpreting leads according to my whim
Allowing passion to overtake me
Performing Flamenco/Egyptian/folk/tango fusion solos when my partner turns his back
Treating my partner as a sort of maypole about which I dance
Becoming ecstatic and inattentive
Allowing the music to be my master.

I felt sure from previous observation of his dancing, that this man was a very exacting ‘fine art’ dancer, and that I would not be able to please him and he would become vexed, so I began to feel uncomfortable. I began to do something I never do on the dance floor – talk. He started it:

‘I’ve been watching you. You’re a very good dancer’ he said.

‘Thank you for the compliment’

‘It wasn’t a compliment, it’s true’

He raised his eyebrows and smiled as he busied himself about the task of leading.

‘Um, I’m rather rusty, I haven’t danced for ten years’ I spun and turned, ‘I don’t know the moves…’

‘All you need to do is be lead’

As he danced he talked, somewhere below me. It became rather ‘Alice In Wonderland’ - curiouser and curiouser. He was the White Rabbit. He seemed to talk as in a dream, I couldn’t quite understand, but was curious about the message. I applied myself to following what he said, not easy with the music loud and the dance leads unfamiliar and exacting.

‘…it’s very rare you see. I travel up and down the country, and there are perhaps only fifty women who can do it’.

‘Aha’ I said, concentrating hard.

‘Now you see, you anticipated me there…’ he said, referring to my dancing.

‘I did?’

‘Close your eyes’.

I danced with them closed. This wasn’t such a good teaching method for me as I love dancing in a trance and am quite able to anticipate with my eyes closed. He tried another tack.

‘You be the man’.

‘Oh no, I don’t do that. I can’t lead’ (the sad truth is, if I had to shift to right brain and retrieve move from my memory banks and direct them, I wouldn’t be able to dance at all. I just don’t know how men do it).

He insisted, very kindly.

‘Now, pull me towards you’ he said.

I pulled. ‘Oh yes, you’re very light on your feet’ I said.

‘Now pull again’.

This time he was leaden and I had to drag him.

‘Ouf, it’s hard work being a man’ I said.

‘Now that’s being lead’ he said. He meant the leaden one. ‘It’s physics you see. If I move you, you keep on moving until I stop you. When I push you down’ and here he pressed on my head and I sank to a semi-squat, a move previously unknown to me. ‘There you see, you anticpated me, try again, but this time, resist being pushed down.’

I did, and felt much more lithe, and strangely, in control.

‘And then when I lead you up again, you don’t want to come up either’. He was right again, no bobbing up out of control, instead a slow measured rising like a bubble in water.

‘So I have to be unhelpful!’ I said, ‘But we women are brought up to be helpful from an early age! It goes against our nature to be unhelpful!’

He smiled and nodded.

He told me I was anticipating again, I’m obviously a compulsive anticipator.

‘I do try to follow’ I said, ‘We women are used to being in control of our own movements, but for dancing I’ve made an exception. I’ve spent years learning not to move myself and to follow instead…’

‘That’s interesting, that is, the word you used there, ‘follow’. Follow me.’

He turned his back on me and scurried away, and after a second I capered after him.

‘Now that’s following, it’s not the same thing as being lead.’

It seems that the oppositite of ‘lead’ is not ‘follow’, but ‘be leaden’. (Although I remember I faced a fair amount of criticism for being leaden, amongst other things, when I was a beginner, so I’m not sure he’s right about this).

‘Be the man again’ he instructed.

He held out his arms to me, and placed his hands on mine, and looked up at me, his bearing somewhere between expectant and expecting nothing. I pulled, and he glided towards me.

‘Again’

He looked up at me, again, somewhere between expectant and expecting nothing, and this time I encountered resistance.

Suddenly, something happened. It was a moment which would have made my Qi Gong teacher exlaim ‘THAT is Qi Gong!’. Suddenly it became One Movement, like a river in its bed. It was sharp, present, alert, with not a trace of drifting and floating.

Then I pushed and pulled him experimentally, looking up at the sky. When I looked down at him, he was letting me know, with a sort of incline of his head, (but still maintaining an expression somewhere between expectant and expecting nothing) that I was not treating the precious ‘one who is lead’ as I should. I hastily abandoned my experiments.

I felt excited, could this apply to personal development, relationships, team work?

He did some footwork.

‘Look down at your feet’ Are your feet going down at the same time as mine or afterwards?’

‘Um, a bit before I would say’

‘They should go down just a fraction after mine’ he said.

‘But aren’t I allowed to do any interpreting myself?’ I said. ‘Don’t I have any leaway, can’t I move with the music?’

‘You can do what you like!’

My turn to raise my eyebrows

‘People who want to have a really good dance do it this way.’ he said.

I began to interrogate him on his background.

‘I don’t recognise any of your moves’ I said, as I came up from a previously undreamed of ‘chest lean’, ‘What kind of dance is it?’

He told me his name, from which I understood that he had made up all the moves himself. So there was no chance of learning the moves and anticipating them. (even a hyper-sensitive anticipation-compulsive like me.)

‘There, you’re anticipating me’ he said, and then ‘Now you’re doing it, that’s it’ he was blissful as I bobbed up and down, in single, and then in double time, as was his wont. ‘That’s it’ he said as I turned.

‘But I’m turning on my heels! Arrgh, I’m not centred, I’m not centred’

When I had recovered myself I asked, ‘What kind of dance background to you have – how do you know all this?’

‘Experience’ he said. ‘I love dancing.’ He did eventually confess to having done some ballroom dancing at the age of 10.

‘Well, you’re a very good coach.’

‘I can only dance in straight lines now’ he said.

‘I LOVE dancing in circles’ I said. (No no, not done, not done). He did not get cross, he gave me a look as if to say, ‘I can believe it!’.

‘Have you done ballet?’ he asked.

‘No. I just love dancing’

‘You move really well, it’s rare. I bet lots of people want to dance with you? You should go far’.

Given I have twice come of age (two times twenty one) and that I have been dancing for years, although not recently, I didn’t quite know what to make of this statement. For an instant I harboured the ridiculous hope that I might become the queen of the the tea dance set after I retire.

‘Keep on dancing’.

The coach moved off to dance with his friend, whom he had also been coaching.

Later I shared my experience of the coach with J-C.

‘Yes, you are very difficult to lead’ he said emphatically. This was not the response I expected from my loyal life partner. He noticed the slight shift of body position, the almost imperceptible narrowing of the eyes.

‘’But it’s okay, I know what to do - now’ he added.

‘You know what to do?’

‘I like it like that. It’s another style’.

Further interrogation is pointless.

My mother doesn’t dance, but I told her all about it anyway, as it intrigued me so. I was getting a bit bogged down and it was starting to sound like ‘The Story of O’ when she said,

‘Oh yes. It’s like a cat’s muscles. They work in opposition. When one flexes, the other doesn’t go floppy, it resists. That’s how you have a smooth, cat-like motion’.

At her words I was visited by a vision of Viktor the Cat.

I really wish I had had my wits about me and had said to the coach, ‘There are only 50 men in the country to know how to lead.’

No wonder most of us women don’t learn how to be lead. We women just can’t practise this art with the majority of Ceroc males in their various stages of development. Not unless we look like a Supermodel and can attract the A list dancers. I did manage to attract an A-list dancer once or twice, when I came up for air at the end of the dance I felt as though I had been put through a double wash and spin dry cycle and I didn't learn much as it was all a bit of a blur.

I also wished I had asked The Coach how to be leaden - I need a bit more detail on the method. I am resolved to learn how to be lead, to move like a heavy locomotive on small well-oiled wheels. I am just not sure how to do it. I have asked my husband to let me practice on him but he declined, preferring instead to read a book.

EpilogueJ-C and I were travelling in France. It was breakfast at the motel. Harsh flourescent lighting blared down from one set of holes in the artex ceiling, and lethal commercial radio glared down from another set, the floor was tiled in the style of a public convenience, the tables decorated with plastic flowers, and there was nothing to eat or drink that did not contain refined starch, sugar or caffeine. I was feeling crotchety. I decided to make breakfast conversation with my husband, who was reading a travel magazine.

‘I don’t understand. Why am I so difficult to lead? I try really hard to be sensitive and accomplished.’

My husband looked up from his reading.

‘Surely after all the dancing I’ve done I can’t be worse than the others?’

‘Well no, not worse – not worse than the beginners. Well, apart from them yes.’

‘What? How can that be?’

My husband gave me a measured stare.

‘I can sense that I am on difficult ground’ said he. ‘I don’t want to try to answer these questions. I can’t analyse it and it’s not the right thing to do.’

This is why my husband is not a dance coach.

‘Why not? Yes you can! I want to know what to do!’ I said, increasingly crotchety.

‘Look at this picture’ said my husband. He held out a picture of a temple in the far reaches of the Gobi desert. ‘What do you think of it? Do you like it?’

‘Well, it’s beautiful, I do like it very much, so?’

‘Would you like to go to this place?’

‘Oh yes’

‘Do you think it would be easy to reach this country? Do you think it would be easy to travel to see this place?’

‘Well no…’

‘It is difficult country, but it makes you want to go to see it. It is worth undertaking the journey. It is not easy, but this is not good or bad, it is just how it is.’

My husband thinks I am a wild country, even after ten years of marriage, tranport links are non-existant and the land uncharted. Is this good?

Well, until this wild country is tamed and coach tours are on offer, I am on the lookout (once maybe twice a year if I am lucky) for dance partners with the following profile:

No pride
Big Strong Sense of Humour
Trained to expect the unexpected like James Bond
Inventive
Responsive
Gracious by nature

Prepared to set out for the wildest far reaches...

Cleaning help

Domestic energy is flagging, so I watched a few rounds of 'How Clean is Your House' on YouTube to get myself charged up and ready for action. Soon I was filled with the zeal to cleanse and purify. With a monumental effort I dragged myself to my feet, and just managed to stagger to my cleaning cupboard, wracked with small irksome pains and minor disgestive disorders.

Then I had an idea. I have in my home a small energetic knight in search of a mission. Not only that but he and his brother are currently on a mission to earn enought money to buy a walkie-talkie set. Not only that, but Kim suggests cleaning nasty little green grime stains with toothpaste - I have some old unwanted toothpaste available for minty fun and no danger to childrens' health. I negotiated a 50 cents deal with R. I had just finished explaining how to seek out scrub and destroy, when I heard a voice ring out,

'I've finished!'

It took four works inspections before one third of the staircase was half cleaned, but there was a lovely minty smell.

I am determined to train my sons to clean, and to harness child energy to help me in my domestic quest, so I will persevere. The trick is to have a job which is for them a game, such as:

Ripping up worn out sheeting for rags - one hour of fighting fun, very small rags, but need to hoover afterwards

Throwing washing downstairs - on top of your brother, and then leaping upon...getting the washing into the machine is harder.

I'll let you know if I think of any more.

A Dance with Viktor, My Glorious Past

I want you to know that I have danced with this man. We called him Viktor the Cat. God he could move.

One evening, at a Ceroc dance at the Casbah in West London, he chanced by, and in one gesture he flung down his coat and picked up my hand. I was his warm-up. I can only describe the experience as like being in the drum of a washing machine during the fast spin cycle. I was way out of my league. But I want you to know that I have lived.

Artichokes

Artichokes must be in season because they appeared in my organic vegetable basket yesterday, a little one for R a medium one for B and two big ones for me and J-C. When you eat whole artichoke heads, you are eating the opening bud. Artichokes are more nutritious if you eat them within a few days of them being picked, if you steam them for 10 - 15 minutes and eat them immediately after cooking. I keep the stalks and slice them into soups or stews.

This is my mother in law's method: I boiled some eggs, took two egg yolks and mashed them (the leftover whites I mashed up with 2 more boiled eggs and some mayonnaise for B, one of his favourite dishes, so no waste). Then I made plenty classic salad dressing with olive oil, lemon, mustard and a pinch of salt.

To eat them, we tip the plates by propping them on a fork, sloping away from us. Then we spoon in some dressing and mashed egg to the bottom of the slope. Then we peel of the scales one by one, dip in dressing and egg mixture and nibble off the tender bits. We work our way excitedly towards the flower, the scales becoming more and more tender and delicious and we eat them whole. When we reach the flower, we cut the heart in two, scoop out the florets which get stuck everywhere (known as the choke!), and eat the heart.

Drama, deliciousness and nutrition (rich in vitamin C & other antioxidants and vitamins, magnesium and potassium and some protein) in one vegetable experience. It feels like just what we need at this time of year.

Thinking

I've just started a Goethian Thinking workshop. A thinking workshop, what could be better? (apart from a thinking workshop followed by a good meal and a dance).

Thoughts - lovely juicy living pulsating thoughts, crystallising, dissolving, reforming - challenges, inspiration, renewal.

Sanskrit has words for many things which we haven't thought to name, and the word samyojana which means 'to crystallise', and speaks of knots and blocks of pain anger and frustration which can set up permanent residence in us, comes to mind. Perhaps the same word can be applied to rigid thoughts. Hildegard of Bingen (my heroine, on the left, self portrait) spoke of veriditas - 'greening'. She wrote: 'the world is all verdant greening, all creativity' that 'greening love hastens to the aid of all', an antidote to a dryness which causes our 'souls to waste away'.

'I am the breeze that nurtures all things green

I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits

I am the rain coming from the dew

that causes the grasses to laugh

with the joy of life.'

Senhor H and the Jehova's Witnesses have written short stories in our lives, and they will continue their own stories with their own people. Senhor H and the JW's are sincerely and undoubtedly on a spiritual path, and they believe, they know they are right, and yet they are painful to live with! They have something, they have something that is right...and yet...something...not. We could dismiss them as mad. We could dismiss all spirituality as nonsense. What can J-C and I learn?

The JWs, with their index fingers pointing at what is true in the Bible. Above them, another finger points down what is right way to interpret the Bible, as dictated by their belief system, enthusiastically applied by their leaders. No worries about interpreting the Bible. Not much room for maneouvre on the thought front. In the case of one JW, not much place for heart and hara - what drives him to spiritual cold-calling? The other more intriguing, heart, humour were present, warmth, but once reaching the head the thoughts were firm - firmly closed to me. They seem to seek and see only what is in their original belief system, as it is taught. As do so many of us. As could J-C and I.

Senhor H, extraordinary man! Powerful will, the guts to carry it out, the metabolic renewal be young and strong, the heart open to the pain of injustice, driven to help the world, the consciousness open to the spiritual world...and yet. J-C, having read very carefully Senhor H's World Improvement literatures, believes that Senhor H needs to develop his thinking - his intellect if you like, but in the most living pulsating sense! As the thinking is stunted and rigid, everything backs up there. His analysis of the problem is good, but his political solutions are ill-formed and ugly, useless to the world. He lives with this frustration. Everything he does comes from God he says, but when I question him on whose idea is it to make the political changes he suggests, he says 'mine', and his writings on the subject pre-date his spiritual transformation. I can only imagine the frustrations of his spiritual team - or perhaps not, perhaps it is his mission to bash at the gates of political injustice, with meaningful message for politicians' wives. I doubt he would see it that way.

Senhor H and the JWs, proclaim that they are inspired by God. If there are, this does not mean that we have to believe all they say and follow. We do not have to cry out hysterically, 'A miracle, a saint, our saviour' just by the fact they have contact or an experience of the spiritual world. I have always been very impressed by people who have spiritual evidence, as I was brought up an atheist, and the merest hint of something not material was for me a miracle. I have come up against this challenge over and over again in my life, people who call themselves people of God, and yet are painful to live with...having something...but yet not.... At last, at last, I can report, insight begins to dawn!

For JC and me, Senhor H and the JWs are loud and clear reminders that this is the time of Humankind's independence, and it is vital that free, living thinking be developed! I do not confuse this with current scientific thinking or intellectual thought. But I do not dismiss scientific thinking or intellectual thought either, it is an essential starting point for a noble purpose. We cannot be thoughtless channels of the spirit any more, we cannot be rigid thinkers in the face of the adversity of our time, determed to hold true to our right beliefs. Now, we must continually set ourselves right! An act of will, heart and mind.

Edward DeBono has it - revolutionary thought! He illustrates that what was right may not continue to be - what was right for one people at one time and at one stage of their development need not become crystallised as Right for all time, nor damned as Wrong for all time for that matter. It's all so freeing!

Now I have to confess that as an 'oooh aaah isn't it lovely' sort of heart and feeling person (applicable to both inner and outer experience) the thinking thing comes as a bit of a shock. Do we really have to clarify and quantify the obvious? What is the point? It all seems rather dry. The possibility that purity of thought, and universally true thought at that, could be The Path is rather daunting. And for J-C who thinks everything out with extreme clarity and doesn't know if he has that 'oohaah' thing until much later, if at all, would rather like experience reinforcements. But I do think and he does feel and we are working on it.