2006/08/05

Full article which I abridged for the back of the flyer for Chelmsford

Living Circle Dance ; Live Music with Brian Steere

My adult life has been inspired toward the process of awakening. I find guidance and support through many forms and am not subscribed to any one teaching. But I resonate with and recommend ‘The Power of Now’ by Ekhart Tolle as a good example of what I mean by awakening.

I have been teaching and sharing dance since the late 80’s. During the 90’s I was a co organiser of Dance Camp East and co-founded the Mayflower Camps where the dance became a living focus of our camping communities as well as growing in live musicmaking.

Circle dance is a kind of folk dancing where we mostly join in lines or a circle and the dance has a form that we all share. Yet it holds the dimension of stillness and feeling awareness. Many of the dances are slow and simple and invite participation rather than competition or attainment. Though a few dances have a partner element, most do not. You do not need to bring a partner to come.

Circle dance draws music and dance from many cultures past and present. This helps to raise an appreciation of our common humanity. I see circle dance as a tool for peace on an individual and collective level.

Living music is the gift of the spirit of inspiration which calls us in the innate language of our own being. Rather than focusing on perfecting the forms we use the forms to open through into inspiration. Music and dance may thus serve as a vehicle or doorway to our true selves.

My approach to dance is simple and yet profound. I join with and facilitate the dancer that you are, (whether you know it yet or not), rather than engage the mind that thinks it needs to be in control, (and which then generally gets in the way of joy). I share dances in a musical relationship that is easy to pick up and does not require more than some willingness to join with the group and move with the music.

I share dancing as a practice to invite and participate in a present state of Be-ing.

We live in a world that is increasingly time driven - and fear dominated. Be-ing is the dimension of Sanity. We don’t make it - it encompasses and infuses us. To come back into this simplicity is freedom.

A shared experience of music, dance and stillness help to calm us and bring us to the present - especially when we are feeling disconnected from our joy or peace.
Experiencing of a sense of self that is ‘part of’ rather ‘than apart from’, simply by moving with music that moves us.

In this respect, our dance is a meditation, bringing attention present through simple means, yet dynamic in its range of qualities and relational in that our sense of each other and the atmosphere we share is transformed as we relax into the dance. But it is also wholesome creative fun, and often deeply moving and yet held without sentimentality.

The times we live in are such that music is now considered to be a canned commodity, dance is either a competitive sport or something done privately in the dark while drugged. The mindset of the individual ‘getter’ is largely promoted as a norm. This is a poor shadow of a life. I offer Living Dance as a way of reconnecting with a present and energetic sense of being alive - and sharing it by receiving it.


Brian Steere
Friday, August 4, 2006