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Dancing for Peace in Luanda, Angola, Africa
A Tamalpa Leadership Training Project
by Dana Swain
I live in Luanda, Angola as an American expatriate. That’s a simple statement that belies the profound experience of entering another culture, and such a radically different one at that. Initially. I saw so much that sent my senses and my emotions reeling. I saw people living in conditions of poverty I could not imagine. I saw people without limbs or paralyzed from polio having to beg for money between cars in heavy traffic. I knew the average life expectancy for an Angolan man was 45, and that 50% of children died before the age of 5. I also saw an indomitable, creative spirit in the connections between family and friends, through an easy humor, and through the creativity of song, drama, and dance.
It was the latter that transported me out of my culture-shocked paralysis, and moved me into a place of dedication and inspiration. I knew how movement and dance set my heart free, and I felt that if I could connect on that level with people in Angola, I’d be on my way to finding a healing place for them, and for myself. But first, I had to find a common ground of expression where two cultures might meet, and where art and healing might serve as the medium. I went on a journey in search of such a medium, and I found the Tamalpa Institute.
I participated in two Tamalpa workshops the summer before I entered the level one training: Self-Portraits with Jaime Niesenbaum, and Community Ritual with Anna Halprin. At the end of Jaime’s workshop, in the closing circle, Jaime said we should take this work into the world. In Anna’s workshop we did the Circle the Earth Ritual run in which we each made a dedication to personal and global issues. A seed was planted and I knew then that this was exactly the work I could and would take to Angola.
Following my advanced studies in the Tamalpa Leadership Training, I felt I had the tools to try the work in Angola. Circle the Earth and the Planetary Dance were the perfect dance scores with which to begin. Both these dances address issues of peace and use the 5-step process for healing as a basic structure for the workshop and the choreography.
My intention in doing the Dance for Peace was to let youth use their inherent gifts in dance and performance to address issues for peace in their communities.
Angola has recently emerged from a thirty-year civil war, and issues of war and peace are everywhere. As the kids identified within the dance workshop, peace is not just an issue of “not fighting.” Peace is about having clean water to drink, electricity, food, and education. Peace is about a respectful community and government allowing people to do more than survive—it allows them to thrive.
Joy Packard, my peer in the Tamalpa Leadership training, worked with me to create the Dance for Peace in Luanda, Angola, and it was an amazing experience and wonderful success. Joy reflected in her value-actions about the workshop experience: “Working with the physical, emotional and imaginative realms of expression in movement and art enables cultural differences to come forward as well as transcending them. Using the Tamalpa work, I feel alive, I have a place here and a job to do!” We used Tamalpa scores and activities throughout the 5-day workshop, culminating in a performance on day 6. We partnered with the NGO Development Workshop, who assisted in getting the venue, gathering the youth, who all belonged to a group called "Youth Ambassadors for Peace," a structure created by Development Workshop, and generally helped facilitate several of the project details.
There were many profound moments during the workshop and performance. On the fourth day of the workshop we let the kids create their own closing ritual. We broke them into groups of 10 to create their own dances and share them with the group. Joy and I facilitated the discussion of which parts of the dances they had witnessed would be used in the closing ritual. With 50 kids, there was a lot of intense discussion. At one point talks broke down and an argument between two strong leaders in the group ensued, with the rest of the youth taking sides behind these two. This was so reflective of what happens in many conflict situations. We were down to the last 5 minutes of the workshop—there was pressure to finish on time. I brought to their awareness how the conflict was manifesting, and the fact that it was a perfect example of how people get into conflict. I suggested they “move it” rather than talk about it. Within moments, through movement, the conflict was resolved into a dance that blended both ideas of the conflicted parties together. We ended with not one minute to spare, but exactly on time. It was a moment of true triumph and reflected the whole purpose of this work. The youth used the principles they believed in along with creative movement and expressive practices to come to a resolution of their conflict.
The performance on day 6 was electric. During the Earth Run portion of the dance, kids dedicated their run to the women of Angola, to the children who couldn’t afford going to school that year, to adequate health care, and many other deeply relevant issues. Then, spontaneously, some kids left the run and gathered members of the audience up to run with them. At another spontaneous moment the kids ushered their witnesses back to their seats and continued their run. At the end of the run, the kids sat back to back, and two kids who’d had a bit of a rivalry going during the workshop spontaneously spoke out a prayer: One asking for forgiveness, and the other granting his forgiveness. Forgiveness is a powerful, necessary part of peace that naturally manifested for these youth as part of their healing process.
Eunice Inacio, an Angolan woman nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for her work with peace and conflict resolution issues in Angola, was the first to hear of and approve the Dance for Peace project. She was in attendance on the first day and gave a speech during the Earth Run on the performance day. She brought the directors and creators of Development Workshop, and to our surprise and delight they had the dance filmed! After the dance, they decided to make a documentary of it, and to use it to show people not just in Angola, but as an example for all of southern Africa.
My hope had been to give youth in Luanda, Angola an experience of bonding and of exploring issues of peace in their country. I believe we accomplished that goal, but in addition the youth gave me a gift--one of hope. I was overwhelmed with their dedication, their creativity, openness, vitality, and community.
This is a program that will continue with leadership training, and teaching people in harder to reach municipalities. The result, I hope, is that the people of Angola will have other, creative tools to manage their differences, to have new ways to tell their stories, to come into an even deeper sense of respectful community, and to reclaim pieces of their heritage through dance. As Jindanji, a member of the workshop and Dance for Peace performance stated eloquently in reflection after the dance: “peace is an aspect of living, not just shutting down guns.”
Many people helped to make this project possible, and I am deeply grateful and astounded by all the generosity and work that went into this process. Anna Halprin talked with me one afternoon and helped to transform my understanding of the dance to a deeper level. Colleagues from my Tamalpa training class who had taken part in prior Circle the Earth dances helped me with initial scores and their experiences about participating in the dance. Volunteers in the ex-pat community here in Luanda gave their time, their witnessing, and their organizational skills to the project. Chevron donated the entire project cost of $10,000. My co-facilitator, Joy, flew from England to Africa to help me, worked with me for months before on the scores and activities, and taught me much during the workshop.
The ending is a beginning. Joy wrote in her diary:
"From the moment the humming starts and the line of linked Youth Ambassadors for Peace comes down the steps into the concourse we just know it’ll be all right. They lead the witnesses around their spiral, sit them down, and then they’re off. It is beautiful. Full of hope, presence, spirited youthfulness, dreams, fun and souls shining ever so brightly. They even throw in a bit of improvised audience participation half way through. Seamless. The Earth Run wasn’t desultory--it was majestic. The prayers were of, and out of, this world.
It was a homecoming.
It was a performance.
It was a ritual.
It was theirs."
Another beginning: Peace Dance Luanda continues with a youth leadership training program . Tamalpa Institute has offered scholarships for two youths from this program to train at Tamalpa Institute in 2007-2008.
Dana and Joy share their stories and reflections on the workshop and performance in parallel diaries from Day 1- Day 7.
Click here to read Dana and Joy's diaries ››
- Project designers and facilitators Dana Swain and Joy Packard
- Circle the Earth and Planetary Dance was originally designed and led by Anna Halprin in 1981. Participants and witnesses of the dance began performing it in their own countries and communities. It has been performed in 35 countries worldwide. This is the first performance in Angola.
- Project advisor Daria Halprin.
Tamalpa Leadership Trainings run annually in a full time and weekend training format
Post script:
By request of the founders of Development Workshop, Dana has begun the first Leadership Training in Luanda with youth from the Planetary Dance. Development Workshop is turning the film of Planetary Dance Luanda into a documentary to use in Angola and other communities in southern Africa.
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A Report from Bogotá
Ilse Jordan
I am a 2003 Tamalpa graduate from Colombia. Wow!! That feels good!! When I came back to my country in July 2003 I was very anxious about what I would find in relation to movement-based expressive arts therapy. I knew I wanted to translate the Tamalpa work into my language and to my people. My question was: What kind of work was already there in Colombia, or was my job going to be to open up a totally new field? To my surprise I found people (more than I thought) working on an expressive arts approach, and, thanks to a dear psychologist friend, I got in touch with a beautiful center for the rehabilitation of people with physical disabilities — CIREC (Integral Center of Rehabilitation of Colombia). This center has a program that focuses on psychological rehabilitation through the arts. They have a space full of art materials and do free workshops in arts such as sculpture, wood painting, glass work, and painting. They also have specific expressive arts therapy workshops, where art is intentionally used for its therapeutic powers.
I started, with my friend, as a volunteer. The most beautiful and exciting challenges have come from the people I am working with: most of them are men who have had amputations because of accidents with landmines. They arrive on crutches, in wheelchairs, or without parts or all of their arms or legs. This is a sad reality of my country, which continues to be in a kind of war. So, here I am working with the Halprin life/art process with these wonderful and brave people, helping them heal somehow the wounds of war, insanity, and injustice. These people come to the city of Bogotá from little towns and villages all over the country. For the first time in their lives they can experience a space where they can express themselves creatively with any of the feelings or issues that show up for them around their disabilities, the pain of war, their losses, or their fears for their future.
For me the greatest challenge has been to see these people as having the same possibilities as any other human being with a full body. I have had to confront my beliefs and that has led me to ask them, when they do activities, to imagine movement even in their lost extremities, to see themselves again as a whole, proving that they too can keep on drawing, painting, writing, singing, sharing, communicating!
The “results” after each workshop are amazing. As Daria says, the work of expressive arts therapy works by itself! It’s very overwhelming for me to see that happening in my language and country.
Two women who for two months took our CIREC expressive arts therapy workshops showed me the true power of “the work.” They are Elquis and Vidalia, two beautiful Colombian women who live in the countryside many hours away from the capital city. One has an amputation from the knee down of her right leg; the other is in a wheelchair. Both are mothers who arrived at CIREC to learn how to use the new prosthetics that the center gives them, so they could then go back home and share their happiness about a new possibility of movement with their children, who were their only reason for doing all this.
When they first came to our workshops, Elquis and Vidalia were very depressed by all the difficulties they faced and so they drew that. They cried, they moved, they started feeling what it meant to relax, to close their eyes for a little bit of peace. They started enjoying that space a lot and asked: “What is this therapy that you are doing?” Then a wonderful surprise arrived. They both came and asked my psychologist friend and me if they could plan and themselves lead a two-hour workshop. Of course we answered yes. And my curiosity about what it was going to be grew.
Elquis and Vidalia planned it all by themselves, asking me only for the “relaxing” music that I played at the workshops. They personally invited their friends who were there for rehabilitation. But they also asked—and this was their main focus—the director and founder of CIREC, their physical therapists, people from the administration office, their doctors, and other people who had treated them to join them in the workshop. They took on the role of facilitators with such grace, responsibility, and enthusiasm that I couldn´t hold back my tears of emotion.
Their two-hour workshop was shaped very much like the ones they had participated in with us, including some relaxation time with eyes closed, guided by them, as well as drawing, writing, sharing, and so on. But the unique stamp of their amazing creativity came from the way they started the workshop. They had us all sit in a circle, and Elquis went around with a bag full of slips of papers, asking us each to take one. On each piece of paper, they had written specific physical disabilities like “lost right leg from knee down,” “lost two arms from shoulders down,” or “paralyzed from hips down.” After that the instruction for the next two hours of the workshop was for each of us to assume that disability as if we really had it. They asked us to draw, write, and do the rest of the workshop with the physical disability we had picked up from the piece of paper. They were really on the alert, reminding us if we suddenly cheated or forgot!
Two things stood out for me from this exercise: One was their intention to make us feel in our own skin how they feel every day of their lives doing such small things as lacing one’s shoes, sitting down, writing, going to the bathroom—things we definitely take for granted or don’t even pay attention to. The other was their creativity in scoring such a beautiful workshop that came from the place of how they felt and what they wanted to share with the staff to help them in the rehabilitation process. It was a beautiful way to switch roles for two hours, in a very respectful and creative way.
The workshop was an absolute success, and they got absolutely motivated to continue it in their hometowns, where there are more people suffering from amputations because of landmines who are not able to go to Bogotá for rehab. When I saw them again six months after they left the center, they were doing great giving their workshops in their little towns, being great leaders in their community, and assuming an active role in their own rehabilitation as well as in helping others. These are women who hardly finished high school but who are full of light to share, who are willing to seize the chances around them to grow and to make a difference.
In addition to continuing my volunteer experience with CIREC, I’ve been hired by another organization to give workshops to young people who work with children. The idea is to help eradicate child labor in mining zones of the country (for gold, emeralds, charcoal, clay) by offering an expressive and artful space for children after school so they can continue developing themselves as children and not have their rights taken away by having to go to work and quit school. These workshops are supported by the government, national institutions to protect families and children, and some international organizations. This is another example of my country’s realities and the possibilities to work through this problem with an expressive arts approach.
I feel blessed to have had the chance to connect with people and places that are in the same way trying to make a big difference in my country’s reality. From this work and especially from Elquis and Vidalia I’ve learned more about the power of Tamalpa and its tools. Tamalpa’s generosity opens up a thousand possibilities to work with every human being no matter who they are or what they do or what their story is. It freely shares all its knowledge so that anyone who needs it can use it and create with it to make a difference in their lives, in the lives of others, and in their country’s realities.
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Abling the Disabled through the Expressive Arts
Anne F. Alper
The Cedars of Marin is a residential community for developmentally disabled adults. It also provides a nationally recognized continuum of day programs to enhance the quality of its residents' life experience. At the Victory Center the expressive arts program director chose to revive a drama class and asked me to be its teacher/director. The clients named the revival "The Surprise Theater Company."
We are a group of actors growing, and welcoming others to grow with us, in our ambitious search for personal expression through the arts. We look to ourselves and each other to acknowledge what the needs of the day are and how these needs can best be served through dramatic presentation.
Classes begin with a movement exercise, followed sometimes by a meditation and then a discussion of what is happening in each person's life: a favorite staff person has died of cancer; one house manager is leaving with a new one soon to arrive; a client has just had a disagreement with his dad on the way to class; someone is grieving the loss of a parent or a privilege. Whatever is in the present tense for a client is what the script becomes. My interest is to expand the range of feelings and explore how the participants know themselves through their expressed emotions. I use the work of Tamalpa to facilitate the process. We move, draw, creatively write, and then dramatically improvise with each other our real life experience.
I give permission and encourage everyone to express feelings honestly within the group. We share a mutual trust, and we respect and care for each other. We create what I believe to be the safe environment for expression by reminding everyone that we are in community with each other, an ensemble of actors brought together to help each other do our very best work.
I have witnessed unusual generosity, kindness, and compassion among these people. They bravely pursue new terrain through the expressive arts. I continue to be surprised by the quality of inquiry that is so integral to our work. Searching for the feeling factor, I direct Lindy to encounter another actor on our stage and build the relationship through dialogue. She is a marvel—her insight is so clear and forthcoming. She also knows when to quit questioning and listen. Tony is gentle and does unusual work in assisting others in the improvisation—he gently encourages his peers to consider options; he is committed to the process and rather persuasive. Gretta loves the work, but I don’t always understand why. She is an enigma—quiet and shy. But when given the opportunity to move or dance, she takes off. Together we work on her body posture so that her "dancer" is confident and proud. Inspired by a fable we’ve read together, Gretta discovers a character befitting her new self-identity. Both the movement and the imagining of herself in a new role clear her thinking, and her verbal skills are markedly improved. Grace, a great talent in the ensemble, makes a tremendous contribution, always putting her true feelings on the line, showing up in the midst of sadness—a genuine inspiration. She has a particular penchant for animal characters; the mother bear with her cubs are staples in her repertoire.
We live intimately with each other although we meet just twice a week. The intermodal activities keep the group interested—there’s always work to be done in the name of the theater. Courageously, the group encounters troubled behaviors, identifies the issue, and determines if and how behavior may need to change. Through our art, our life together improves.
Here are a few abstracts from class sessions—my way of introducing the theater company’s work to you.
Session 1: Kindness
Grace has a story that she needs to tell. An anniversary card she gave her parents upset them. Her relationship becomes our script. It generates active imagination and drama. Feelings are evoked. Everyone contributes to a poem that the group entitles "Kindness."
While loving and angry
I feel hurt
About
The not knowing.
I'm upset.
The card is marvelous
But
Unappreciated.
I need kindness.
The actors choose their roles. Betty is Mom, Tony is the wounded daughter, and Lindy is Dad. Using the poem, we now create a dramatic scene in which the parents and child develop the incident with a confrontation and change. Bridget introduces forgiveness as a new possibility: to ask for forgiveness = the apology= the turning point. A calm settles on the family.
Upon completion of the improv the actors become drummers and introduce Grace as the solo dance performer. The poem, “Kindness,” is read to accompany the performance. Grace embodies the initial feelings toward her parents, demonstrates the conflict in movement, and creates a new dance. I am so touched by the way Grace works through her emotions, finishing with a gentle touch for each of us in the circle. In silence, she circles around the room and rests her fingertips on each person’s shoulders. A gesture of forgiveness—ah, such beautiful work! Her face expresses a clearing. Witnessing the improv, I imagine Grace is able to consider options for the family upset. Her face is soft, relieved of tension. When we finish for the day and create a closing circle, we do the “Unstuck” dance. Everyone goes around the circle and calls out in voice and movement what he/she wants to be unstuck from.
Session 2: The Dance of My Hands
With music playing, each person takes a turn directing the morning warm-up—we call it “pass the baton.” People seem to focus exclusively on the hands, so we call this “The Dance of My Hands.” As we go around the circle, I ask each person, “What’s the story of my dancing hands?” Each person develops her (or his) dance story into a solo performance for her peer audience. She names the dance, moves the dance, and then we create a group mural depicting the dance through another medium. I then interview each artist and write the story of the Dance of My Hands. We hang the mural up to serve as our set for improv. It’s such a perfect example of creative learning through the expressive arts—these stories are dormant if not invited onto the stage of movement, poetry, and play. I say thank you, God.
Planning for the next session, I think it is time to bring the whole Victory Center together to celebrate our diversity within the expressive arts collaborative. After researching café societies, I realize that forum speaks to what I am searching for—a project to promote community wellness, demonstrating the inter-being of our expressive arts curriculum. With everyone’s cooperation, the Victory Center Café Society opens one afternoon in March. The theater company, scheduled for the p.m. demonstration, begins the day with the following encounter.
Session 3: Feeling Up and Down, In and Out
Grace's got a case of the blues. Her dad passed away last week. "He was ill. He's in heaven, but, boy, I miss him." I hear you, Grace. And so our day begins. Grace says she's feeling up and down. The dance begins. In our circle, each person moves to the feeling of up and down. The movement changes to feeling in and out. Each person, with a single hand gesture, tells a story. This is a powerful session. Grief is real for everyone in the company. Here are a few shared experiences:
- Terry’s fists are clenched. He says he’s angry, feels mad about the danger inside, feels hurt. We explore what it feels like to breathe through the clenched fists—they relax, he lets go. The new posture seems to reveal the hidden hurt and provide some relief.
- Lindy’s in and out dance is about restlessness. What does she do when this feeling comes over her? She sits separate but still in the group. It comes and it goes—later she asks that we keep her walking with us so she doesn’t disappear.
- Grace shakes her head—she’s in grief and uncertain what out of grief will feel like. She is our prophet, “I’ve been up and down and I’m not going to isolate myself. I mean, I’m doing things, I’m here.”
When our café society at the Cedars opens, the reviews from our guests are quite thrilling. The commitment to the creative collaboration from staff and Victory Center clients is stellar. We are of one mind, heart, and soul—our mission: to serve ourselves, our community, and our guests. All that we’ve dreamed becomes a reality. Working with each other and all of our abilities brings the extended Cedars community together: administration, staff and clients from other programs, families, and friends. We read poetry and creative writing, showcase artwork and theater performances. We dance and eat fruit and cookies. It is more than sweet; it bridges separation—from ourselves and those we love. In the name and practice of expressive arts, all this is accomplished.
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Embodying Nature, Becoming Ourselves
by Jamie McHugh
We are elements of nature: our soma and psyche are reflections of the planet. This relationship between the inner and outer ecosystems is key to any discussion about ecosomatics. Many conversations about ecology, with all of the doom and gloom statistics, often overwhelm people with despair. It is hard to hold a space for hope when fear arises. Returning to a direct sensory encounter with the natural world, though, can awaken a powerful passion and connection. As a faculty member at Tamalpa Institute, I have been taking groups to Point Reyes National Seashore for the past 20 years and have witnessed this in action.
As we go to the beach each day, we open our senses and re-organize our civilized bodies to creatively embody our primal nature. Breath, sound, touch, movement, and stillness are the preverbal somatic languages of the organism. Their use creates the inner conditions for spontaneous responses to the outer environment. I can feel my breath, my solidity and fluidity, and am aware of the universe in me. I know where I am so I can give over to nature. The somatic elements give the organism security to abandon habit and try something new. Alternating between eyes closed and open, the inner meets the outer, and all of it becomes a resource for response.
As two distinct approaches, I differentiate the biological (somatic) from the imaginal (expressive). One somatic approach I use is based on the basic developmental movement patterns of infants, one of the biological languages of the body that takes us back to the origins of life. Just like an infant, we go through the five stages of movement: Yield, Push, Reach, Grasp and Pull. Yielding into the sand, allowing my body to be fully supported, leads me into pushing against, feeling my boundaries, to then reach out into space, go to what I want, and incorporate it. Rocking, creeping crawling, rolling…all of these basic movements in relationship to the environment take me back to beginner’s mind. From this mind, we then bridge to an expressive relationship with nature--imaginally exploring the qualities of sky, ocean, rock, and even other people, as the input of sensory encounters stimulates the output of your associations, feelings, and images. I use the following five activities as doorways into that process:
With different qualities of touch, and different body parts, make contact with rock. Become what you perceive by physically mirroring (imitating) the solidity, the stability, and the hardness. Respond with movement, sound and stillness to both the input and output. Sometimes simply witness – be still and place your external focus on the environment long enough to be moved internally. And punctuate all of these explorations with rest, open attention, assimilation of experience and just being.
After separating out all these parts, the somatic and the expressive, the biological and the imaginal, come together and become one dance. The burden of “being creative” falls away when we let go and follow the impulses and multiple inputs of all the senses, and what they stimulate in us. Our creative response reflects the richness of human experience; the animal body expresses our essence. Trusting our inner and outer nature more, we can create, live and take action in a state of responsiveness and responsibility that could truly be called ecosomatic.
Jamie McHugh is a performance artist, teacher, photographer and guest faculty at Tamalpa Institute.
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Dialogue
by Tessa Barr
Heart Drain (abdomen) |
things have this way
have this way to coming through,
coming through,
my fingers out into the world. but I have no name for it.
The Rule-maker:
"Come on girl make it up."
"Artist statement please."
"Pin it up on the wall girl."
"Open studio, people will walk by, they will come in to it from that sheet on the wall.
You must be true.
Stay up all night and try to fit it all on one small sheet.
Oh And
Please no poetry."
Out into the World
(abdomen & hands) |
Tessa:
"When I draw it comes
comes right through.
like a wave of water.
I take my candle and pigment deep into the cave.
I could make it up for you, which will have its own sense of honesty
but
When I move it it comes.
No choice it comes.
Close my eyes.
Move.
Open my eyes.
There it is again.
Inescapable.
All around me wants to come (needs to come).
It is blocking the way.
Way out of the cave. Back into the world."
I move, move, move it to get through till something else takes its place. It is impossible to be still something always moving in something always coming out. The drawing is the document to that moment that is also forever changing. In being witnessed it comes into another incarnation. What was a roll of fat becomes a ribbon rolling out of frame.
Once I wanted to paint everything. I had no name for it. It just came out and through dreams sleeping or awake.
Fountain (legs) |
The Oppressor:
"You take a concept, add material, and blend very carefully. Please watch where and how and who you step. All materials must be acid free. If luck and brains conceive you parent an elusive an golden piece of finished artwork. Explanation follows."
Tessa:
"This is what I was taught.
I struggled to release into my natural art-making. I struggled to stifle what my gut wanted to create because I could not name it. I ‘closed it down' and held fast to my self inflicted rules. I confined my spirit and pushed so hard to understand my creations. I could not sit back and interact with my work. It did not speak to me. I tried to strangle it loose. Instead everything went silent and I continued to make and make and make. I followed through no matter what else called to me. I held tight held on to any fleeting thought like gold, like it would be my own keystone.
I developed and dropped.
Straddled the drawing bench. Bent awkwardly over a loom for hours at a time. Mixed paint. Carded wool. Extruded clay I had mixed from powder. Stitched thousands of sequins onto a costume. Waved a metal plate, submerged in acid, with a feather. Built and stretched large and cumbersome canvases. I continually did and made and developed. My art and drive to create hung over me. Never satisfied. Bigger than me. As my repertoire grew my understanding shrank. I tried to develop a relationship and create some boundaries. I lay on my back to keep afloat."
Feathers into Stone (spine) |
I remember mixing paint. Mixing it up until it was just soupy enough and that perfect color too. If I could've danced that color that texture then. Then I could've written that damn artist's statement.
When I move,
I can see it.
I can see something.
Something comes and makes sense.
Imagine to flashing back
(That soupy paint could always speak)
It has always had a name
but to get inside you had to let it speak through you
what comes even when pushing is right
it is all right
what speaks to me
what might speak to you
everything has its own language
but there is only one all at the same time
What will come and what will fall away?
Tessa:
"I can speak to you all now I can speak to the girl up late painting all night years ago.
Did you know that color you mixed last night could always speak?
That it could dance?
Stare long enough at a blank canvas or ball of clay it will tell you what to make of it.
And
Please break the rules (self imposed or otherwise).
And
Please paint everything."
Tessa's Comments on Her Story
I have always known I was an artist and that I make art from my gut. It has mostly come easy to me. I can disappear into a drawing or painting for a whole day. Growing up academics were difficult and I got through school with no skin left on my teeth. I struggled with the idea of having a creative life because it seemed like a big challenge and even bigger gamble. I spent several years trying to "catch up" and get to where I thought I was supposed to be going. Finally I began painting and decided I wanted to paint everything! Everything around me was fuel–the world wanted to be painted, experience wanted to be painted. It was beautiful. I was once again in my element and ended up in art school. There I felt held back and stunted. I began to question everything I did naturally. I felt I had lost what I had so once loved. I had difficulty quieting my mind from what I had learned. I wanted to unlearn. I spent the next 5 years shifting through and recycling what was of value. Slowly things took shape. I found myself in a creative job teaching art. I still struggled and sifted trying to get back to my gut with my own creativity.
A year ago I found Tamalpa (or maybe it found me) and jumped feet first, straight into the level 1 training program. At Tamalpa I gained a new resource for art-making . . . MOVEMENT. I began to move, images came and I wanted to draw everything. I felt free to let many things I struggled with sit to the side. With time and practice I have begun to step away and become aware of what I have been doing and how I have been holding myself back. I now have a new understanding of my creative process. I feel like I can make art almost about anything. I can make art about what I move or write and my art can inspire me to move . . . I can make art about someone else's movement, and move in response to another person's art. After one year at Tamalpa I feel I am more inspired than ever and that the possibilities are unlimited.
On Witnessing the Aesthetic Process
by Daria Halprin
Tessa is just completing her 2005–2006 L1 weekend training, and part of the completion process is a culminating “self portrait ritual presentation.” One of the opening lines in her ritual presentation was “I am an artist in recovery.” Her statement of her serious life theme was delivered with such a sense of gritty humor, and her dance enactment—movement being a new form of process, discovery and creation for Tessa—had the quality of very serious play, a serious playing with her themes, her emotions, and the images in her life-sized self portrait that hung on the wall behind her. Tessa was moving her images and her life story. And we, her witnesses, were moved by her. “To be moved” is an interesting phrase; it suggests that feeling and imagination are somehow connected to an experience of being in motion. Having always painted, for Tessa being in motion with emotion and imagination is a totally new process: letting her painting move, provoke, open and inspire, illuminates the “everything” (as she calls it) in her life story.
For me as a teacher, watching Tessa’s final piece was framed by my experience of witnessing her process throughout the past year. Her final presentation, or act of “recovering,” is made so much more authentic and potent by my active remembering. The arts accompany us as we remember so that to re-member is to re-join parts and pieces in a new form, with new meaning and with artfulness. I am excited by the ways in which Tessa has immersed herself in this embodied expressive-arts process of reclamation. Could we call it a healing? And are we brave enough to let that remain a verb rather than a noun—brave enough not to call it fixed or claim that the gritty, underbelly, shadow stuff can be made to go away and then I, it, you will be o.k.? Can we stay in-flux, constantly moving, becoming, with layer upon layer encountered and treasured?
Tessa’s aesthetic response to her training experience speaks to this process of reclamation and re-membering—the reclaiming of herself as an artist who feels she could “paint everything in the world” and does begin to paint “everything in her life.” In doing so, the “everything in her life” is imbued with the potency of poetic inspiration, metaphor and creative spirit as much as it is with the psychologizing process. Or we might say, one feeds the other, provokes and inspires the other—a life-art bridging.
The history of Tessa’s struggle with art and academia is given a richness in retrospect, the artist’s retrospective, which renders it a beautiful and archetypal story of redemption. What do I and what do you want to recover from, what do I/you/we want to redeem, we might ask. What struggle do you want to dance, paint, evoke, provoke, or celebrate in poetry?
Tessa made a very interesting comment in her training group as we reflected together on the experience of performing and witnessing. In the same vein as “I could paint everything in the world,” she said that while her own piece was certainly very meaningful to her, just as meaningful was the way in which her feelings and imagination were provoked in watching the performances of her peers. She said, “I have the feeling of wanting to dance and paint and write about the themes I saw in each of your presentations; your family history takes me to mine; your theme of holding and being held—I want to explore that for myself; your moving and spoken foot poem—I want to explore what poems are living in my feet; your life and death dance—I want to explore what is mine.” Tessa’s statement that “I could paint everything in the world” leads us to “I could dance everything in the world” or “I could write poetry about everything in my life—or your dance, painting, poem—I could explore that and discover how it lives in me.”
The art opens me, the art opens me to you, the art opens us to the world and opens the world to us.
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