December 1st performance and a personal update
Crossing a threshold
Dear all,
I write with a small update: work, with a brush of the personal. If you are not interested in longer form reflections, please scroll down to the bottom of the page for an invitation to a free performance gathering taking place on December 1st in Rockaway Beach, NY – all of this is a way of communicating why it would be so meaningful if you would be there for it.
I turned 30 just under a week ago, and as I crossed this important threshold I felt a profound deepening of responsibility to my devotional practice (and work, how lucky is that) of creating sanctuary spaces through performance, movement, ritual facilitation, and herbal medicine. It has taken me many years to even begin to braid together the different modalities that I have been drawn to. For those who are new here, or who do not know the path so far:
After beginning my career as a professional dancer/choreographer, I was simultaneously (and very quickly) drawn into the seemingly disparate worlds of training pre-professional dancers, creating social performance practice; ritual facilitation; herbal medicine; collaborations with neuroscientists and psychologists; scholarship; eco-somatics and psychology; and various healing arts/traditions indigenous to my Eastern European ancestry. I have, for the last seven years, attempted to weave these disciplines into a singularity, as the invisible world probably giggled on about my inability to see that this work is not a singularity, but a multiplicity.
As I settled into ceremony on the day following my birthday, I experienced a tremendous sense of unease: Why is it that I feel I have not yet brought forward the work that I am truly meant to create? I share with vulnerability, because I want to be brave enough to tell the truth, because it is my deepest hope that we can collectively keep building worlds for vulnerability and tenderness, and because I have an instinct that I am not the only person in the world asking this question.
One of the reflections that arrived through ceremony is that the lens of separation is quite a patriarchal idea. It has molded nearly every ounce of our consciousness: if you are not identifiable within a singularity, then the consumer economy does not have use for you. Thereby, your work is irrelevant, silly, potentially even a waste of time. I’d like to keep breathing life into the realization that we are all rhizomatic. We draw inspiration from infinite wells, and perhaps cycle back in return multitudinous tributaries of offering to our communities.
I have been reading a lot of Deleuze as I quench my thirst to understanding this moment, and I hearken to him when I talk about the rhizomatic. Rhizomatic: not arborescent, not resembling a tree with roots + trunk + branches + leaves. Not resembling a tree that has some parts that are considered more beautiful or valuable than others. Not resembling a structure where our attention privileges the existence of some for material gain and disregards the rest. Rhizomatic: Spreading in non-hierarchical and non-traditional ways. I think about this not only in how we build community, but also in how we must move forward telling stories, cultivating craft, creating ecosystems of care; how we look at ourselves, listen to the calling of knowledge-building, and tend the threads of the practices we are meant to share with the world.
Part of building that world that I hope for is accepting the rhizomatic possibilities of myself, and the infinity of each person surrounding. Part of building that world is having the courage to step forward with everything that I am curious about, have fallen in love with, and am carrying — in contribution to the community that I most hope to build and serve. This project that I am sharing with you today is a step forward into what I hope to be a more courageous decade up ahead, one I claim as I cross this important threshold.
This upcoming performance work is a practice in the multitude, and calls upon every ache in my heart and tool in my proverbial workbench.
Taking place on December 1st, this is the continuation of a years-long practice I have been building with the ocean: dancing, researching, collecting stories from various traditions that use the ocean as a lens for spiritual practice, and talking to community members about the ways in which their relationship to the ocean offers balm, salve, and healing when it does not appear elsewhere.
It is an offering to the ocean, to collective practice, to speaking about the environmental impact of oceanic relationship, and is also a group activation and healing practice in real time. I hope that it all roots us in the web of time, community, and embodiment that is required for us to move through the world with courage, grace, sincerity, and tenderness.
The day will include:
-movement performance
-group embodiment practice
-herbal medicine and tea
-an interdisciplinary discussion panel
-live music
I hope to see you there, and please share with all of the people you know. I would love to have as many people as possible there. May we move through the complication of this moment and every moment, and find our way into deeper relationship and connection.
You can find more info here, and please RSVP, despite there being no ticket link:
https://partiful.com/e/UXyX1sUdQgXrtWxBt2gi
I cannot wait to see you all there.
All questions are welcome too, just reply to this note.
With care + gratitude,
Amanda