Transitional Day

This is the first day of blogging online about my work process.  In transitioning to an electronic form of my journal, I hope to streamline the process and to make it more accessible.

Since July 11, 2011 I have been consistently walking our 5 year-old dog McTavish (Tavvy) and  journalling about the walk.  The writing serves for me, as a transition into working on complimentary dance phrases.

Up until now I have been afraid to utter the "C" word (choreography) in relationship to this work,  because it seem so grandiose and pretentious.  I have been developing the walk,writing, choreography as a practice that will be sustainable into the school year, which begins in a couple of weeks for me.  All has been progressing nicely.

Until today.

Let me preface this by explaining the progression of my work. For about 4-5 weeks I have been taking the dog (or he has been taking me) on an extended walk.  On that walk, my primary object has been trying to stay in the present.  Mostly I use that walk to make observations about human behaviors or movement, and other sensory input. 

My ritual has been letting Tavvy pull and control the first part of our walk (the first third of a 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 mile walk).  Mid-walk, we hit our stride, walking faster and with less interruptions.  This has continued without much variance.  But in the last week I had a day I had to leave home early for a PD (teacher talk for coursework enhancing my skills as an educator) and I shifted that responsibility to our daughter, who gave Tavvy a BBW (big, big walk) and that may have set the bar a little out of my reach.  For as luck would have it, as I was transitioning out of the BW (big walk) into a shorter walk that would take place after my early morning Feldenkrais lessons were complete, the dog's expectations were being ramped up.

 

So today was the first day that I intended to find time to go back to our original routine.  We left at the usual time, which today included our daughter leaving at the same time.  Today she was going with her dad/my husband to the college class he teaches-public speaking.

And so a day of conflict began my day between Tavvy (my Cairn "terrier-ist")  at the outset of our big walk.

Our bond as a walking team seemed really out of synch and in retrospect, an important catalyst.  As I approach another time of transition and this "conflict" will begin the process concerning the next stage of our walking relationship.  How will I fit this time into my life after school starts?  How can I continue nurturing my work while giving the dog what he needs?  What will this evolve into and how does that feel?

One of the ways I can begin to imagine our walk's evolution, is by the simplification of journal-ing.  Today for the first time I used Dragon Speak on my iTouch and this will make the processing of the walk much simpler and less time intensive.

My walks with Tavvy has been about getting  back into an artistic framework on a daily basis.  On this level I feel successful.  Though I don't have vast output , my process is fully embedded in my brain and body once again. A hope I have for the school year, with its more rigid routine,  is to be able to continue working in the same basic manner to make this piloted effort my "practice".

My objective in the next week or two will be to solidify that practice by starting work on the next section of choreography.  In these phrases I envision sharp movements, an edgyness  perhaps through jumping and other kinds of staccato movements.  Ways of moving that aren't quite as comfortable to me as some of the movements I have created so far.

This speaks to my life as well, with ambivalent feelings about returning to a work schedule.  Though work is my joy, there is still the pull between freedom and stability.  Getting back into a much more rigid routine does pull me in many directions.  So the movement needs to reflect that.  There will always be an innate drive toward more freedom, less discipline and in this work, I want to find ways of showing that kinesthetically.  As I challenge myself structurally it is inevitable I will notice and try to effectively reflect those challenges visually in a choreographic form.  Art not simply self expression.

In this manner, I plan to continue trying to analyze not only my movement from a Feldenkrais perspective, but others in the world around me.  I realized today how difficult that will be and so each walk will be focused on one specific element.  Today it was about the concepts from the book "Awareness Heals".  The lesson was Elegant Walking.

Walking is difficult for many people especially for elderly persons, for whom problems with stairs and curbs are so common that these troubles are sometimes considered inevitable traits of old age.  Yet these and related difficulties may be better explained by the lack of awareness and by age alone. 

And so I will try in the next day or two try to imagine or decide, who has that effortless walk, and what are the characteristics that allow me such an insight.