Today, I started learning a dance choreography by Isadora Duncan, taught by Lori Belilove on Zoom, that I have wanted to learn for five years.
Immediately, when I saw "The Revolutionary" online, after I had started to take classes for Kathleen Quinlan in 2014, I felt that perhaps it could be the vessel for channeling my anger and frustration into art.
I used to say that I have no limits on the dancefloor, that is where I feel the most free and dare to express myself more fully. I was clubbing then, but probably were just missing standing on stage, which I have acting too. Slowly getting back into it through Westafrican dance later and then Hawaiian Hula. But, I am neither Black, nor Hawaiian... I needed to find my own.
So today, I got to do motions with my body I haven't before. And taking my yoga practice further too. Such a gift!
How do we then express our emotions in dances? By putting them into your body and then moving, or finding them in your body and releasing them? Through the resonance with our soul, we can recreate the dance and not just mimic.
Isadora Duncan made this dance in 1924 as a way to show and help the Russian people. Can I dance it in 2020? I know famine, know hard work, and can relate to Russia in the sense that my family heritage also has a past there. I also csn relate to being chained, from being shackled in immigration detention, a couple of times. Not to mention, how my family originally had to flee the French.
I broke free from a career at the end of the 90's, a small revolution of a sorts, just like I'm in the midst of breaking free from my original country of Sweden now, where I haven't been able to have a home for many years. So it's my personal revolution first that I need to both express and do, and then perhaps even be an inspiration for a real one, but not in ways of the common past, but towards what so many have broken. Or for them who needs to continue their own.
What we can relate to personally, is what moves us. Then, we can move.