Resume - a snapshot - where did it come from pt 1

When I was an emerging circle dance teacher in the late 80's I recall a spontaneous evening at Dance Camp Wales. This was catalyzed when I heard Neil McDonald playing Chkassia Kfula and ran to a neighbouring camp circle to dance . My drawstring trousers (nothing else on) fell down mid dance and somehow everyone around seemed to just be coming out of their tent or passing at that very moment! However I didn't let it stop me - (though it did enforce a variation in the dance style). It was an energetic moment. We carried on with other dances. More dancers joined and more musicians joined. When the light faded I brought over some outdoor candles and we continued into the night. I tended to remain a primary focus simply because I happened to recognise the dances first and be demonstrating them in my singing, miming way. Yet the dance wasn't being 'organised' - but rather held by the musicians playing or the dancers calling for a favourite dance. I actually left it some hours later and it was still full of life. What freedom!

That was a seed experience for me as well as a prayer answered (I had wanted to share the dance). The way of it resonated with me.

I also brought my candles to Dance Camp Wales and ran small intimate candlelit sessions in the evenings - which were more like the dance we know in our localities - yet of course magnified in the open heartedness of sharing the camp. This was an alternative to BIG live bashes that could be great but were often - for me - flat and disconnected.

I went to Dance Camp Wales a couple of times after Dance Camp East started. I was in the core group for Dance Camp East for its first seven years and also founded the Mayflower Camps which have run for the last 12 or so years.

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Dance Camp East was initially set up by Madelaine Lees and largely modelled on Dance Camp Wales, except circle dance was very low in its priority. It was extremely busy with multiple workshops and events and to find the opportunity to share dance in the spirit that I love I would feel for occasions where the atmospheric - and timing lined up and initiate an event that was in the same spirit as the one around Neil's circle - except that rather than joining with a random event I would initiate it from a place of commitment yet without attachment to outcome.

Over the course of a few DCE's I soon abandoned the tape player and went out with my guitar even though by myself then I couldn't hold more than a very few tunes together unless other musicians joined. in various ways they joined. Coming out of a freedom and shared receptivity.
These events always happened in a way that expressed something of the camp energy and in ways that many felt participant even if they were only witnessing. I don't actually organise or entertain in this - its more a relationship of invitation held in a simple presence.

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In the Mayflower Camps I specifically didn't want them to be circle dance camps as such or for my known 'circle dance teacher-ness' to be a flag drawing expectations that might have prevented a larger diversity and wholeness. I envisioned the circles such as we know at the larger camps to _Be_ the camp and the camp to arise out of and be the process and community of the circles. And in that context I grew circle dance as a tool and expression of community rather than the primary means of creating one. Again I mostly dropped the tape player and increasingly grew live music among the campers as well as growing my own musical and relational skills and capacities.

There have been many occasions when we have lit up our centre green (around which our open circles joined), and we also often got together to make music and dance out of the hat. One can easily make flat undanceable 'live' music but we hardly ever did - whatever our level of ability. This is largely to do with the quality of relationship and inspiration. So whatever it is is must be alive, present, and a way of sharing joy - or felt appreciation.

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I have recently separated from Lynne and have been and am still in a process of radical change. I have had to come out with new life in order to find one. The old one has fallen off.

I am particularly enjoying and committed to sharing live circle dance that I am singing and playing for. I don't have a band as such but have and do play with various musicians and can serve as a catalyst around which musicians and singers can easily join with. If I say so myself the repertoire I sing is beauty filled and moving - and always growing.
If too many musicians join we can lose subtlety and spaciousness. Sometimes the need for inclusion temporarily wins over the held qualities in the music - but always I look to invite a felt participation rather than each one pushing out something separately.
I don't seek to over control in terms of the what of it but rather hold and guide and demonstrate the way of it. When the group - or at least a core in the group, are holding the culture of the circle then I can - and will - 'just' be a musician or a dancer. But meanwhile I 'just' hold for the openness that invites and allows life to come in as best I can.
I have a sense that my own renewal can also serve renewal in the world. How could it be otherwise?
I hold and demonstrate a visibility and undefendedness in my love of music and dance that is active at a fundamental level and draws any who actually love the dance into a tangible oneness. This may seem to be an exotic or fanciful claim yet I maintain that it is simply the hidden truth of us.

We (generally) have simply forgot as a result of actively remembering the past (in our own making), imposing this onto the present (which actually is NOT of our making), and projecting our past into our sense of future. This may once have seemed like fun but its a diminishing process of limitation that traps our minds into self fulfilling programs that are simply ignorant. To freely join with that which is truly alive in another is always to undermine or break the mindset that obscures the felt wonder and joy of life. Its no great secret.

Except perhaps to those intent on remaing themselves a secret. Privately maintaining their personal judgements as if that were reality itself!

It is true that human beings are generally able to immediately slip into separative habits of thought and intent at the drop of a hat - but no one can feel love of life alive in them and be unchanged by the experience. Joy is attractive and pain is actually not - no matter how it is justified. We grow.

I guess the risk of letting love in, (or letting it arise in response to life), is that this will upset your management of life, and In some sense this is the case. For there is a part of you that - once allowed - will NOT allow you to act as if you are ignorant when in fact you now are not entirely so. This dissonance will manifest as a sense of, (or possibly even actual), dis-ease on some level that prompts you to look more honestly at your life. Scary - but hey! - this is only what life is doing for you anyway. And what could be actually be more scary than to be hostage to a fearful life denying lie that deprives you of sharing the experience of your birthright?