My family inheritance: Reading, writing, the woods, theatre, music, dance, the sea, art. Fight for the cause, fairness for all. Father polite, mother outspoken. Dr. Kings’ saying about being willing to die for what you believe in, glued to my childhood wall. Katherine Rice says I am trailing the Mayflower behind me. Also included is hiding and fear. Tailgating fear is anger and snobbery. So—I’ve got this internal culture going, open, responsive as well as solidified and hid out; the back of my heart, a sore walnut.

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At 16 I learned about form. My grandmother, Katharine Welts, paid my way to The American Dance Festival. I saw one of the first performances of Pilobolus from my reserved seat. I saw Richard Schecner’s Performance Project’s play of Mother Courage. I remember casually walking in and out of the theater. I could see four performances of the same show if I wanted to. Mornings of the first week I took class with Nancy Meehan from Erik Hawkins Company (chasse, hop, chasse, hop). In the second week, I helped Mel Wong tack up a big sheet of butcher paper that said, “Shoulder’s Down!” I studied imagery and moving bones with Irene Dowd. I stepped into a circle of rope and spun round at the direction of Trisha Brown. I stood on a roof and mimicked someone’s gestures from another roof. I ran out on stage with 100 dancers and did my 10 seconds and then Twyla Tharp did a solo linking all our movements while I stood in the wings and actually trembled. I danced with Chuck Davis’ African Dance Company on the lawn in the moist Connecticut sun. We tried to spin without getting dizzy. And even though we looked at the tips of our fingers, not the moving horizon, most of us fell on the grass. We ate salt tablets. A dancer from the Graham Company wandered through the halls on Saturday night, in her nightgown, shouting drunk. That summer all the young people lived on one hall. I decorated my room with line drawings of my feet; sent letters to my grandmother with sketches of thin tall excellent dancers, high cheeks and both types of ballet buns. Then me, with my big bones, in my green leotard, grey sweats turned inside out, and warm up socks scrunched down at ankles.

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This week, from our kitchen radio I hear, Form is a way of conserving energy. The form of my robes wrapped around is a porous protection. This morning at 4:25, Easy tucked under my arm, I thought, The form I am doing now is the form of sleep. I give myself permission to do sleep. Dancers say everything is a score. I want to be released from constraints and at the same time constraints give me freedom. I can lean into the walls of form. I can see, through the constraint, what I’m not.

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Do you know about this Improvisational Theaters’ practice of Yes/And where you go along with whatever is presented and then add something? For instance, Mark appears on stage and says, This is the best spaghetti I’ve had. Darla goes along by saying, These are extremely long strands of spaghetti… Darla doesn’t kill the scene by saying, This is not spaghetti, and there’s no restaurant. It’s Detroit and we’re riding in an Oldsmobile with my dog, Harry. That’s a no/but. The no/but destroys the set up, kills a spark and stops the life of the improv.

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This week I wrote on face book a quick misspelled rant. Some one wrote, “What is happening here.” (no question mark). Aha! A no/but. Emily Harrison wrote Katharine Kaufman is happening here. Emily metaphorically walked onto the stage where I was flopped on my belly, sniffling, and said, Yes/And. Let’s stand together.

 

A close cousin of the practice of yes/and is beginner’s mind.

 

Business coach Marie Forleo says, the absolute worst thing you can do while listening to her podcast is to say, I already know that. Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi agrees: In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the experts’ mind there are few.

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When I think I know- it- all I cut possibilities of the string of moments like pulling the plug on my Christmas tree. I am hunched around my own righteous smugness in the comfortable darkness of my reserved seat at the theater, partly buzzed by surprise and delight of what’s around me, and not letting on. As Chogyam Trungpa says, I am waiting in ambush, for the next move I can criticize. (Dancers shouldn’t be so close to the audience if they are trying to be tragic! If I see three women in tan unitards doing cobra pose, downstage left once more I’ll throw up! Don’t show me your process of developing a theme; just get to the point! That piece did not deserve that ending! That was a jarring light change!) If I climb out of my snail shell I’ll be raw. It’s not hard to play the game. This learned reaction to fear and self-preservation is disguised as being smart. Everyone around me sees through it. The unconscious habits I have learned are the ones that will hurt me, and whomever happens to be in my wake.

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Although I was immersed in the dance/art world during the summer Festival of 1974 in Connecticut, I didn’t see that I was privileged. The other world of non-artists was inferior. At home I rode the subway to my morning dance class confident of the juxtaposition of those wearing suits, carrying brief cases and then me. Freedom. Sort of. Actually, I wasn’t facing my life. I held my views, hard.

 

It was easy to translate my internal terror and external uptight exclusivity and smugness right over to the practice and views of Yoga. Even in the Zendo I attached importance to technique and my teacher’s words, disregarding those to my left and right.

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There’s a Zen tale about this person who walks from monastery to monastery looking for the perfect place to practice. He carries a large bag over his shoulder. He sets down the bag at the gate of the monastery, sniffs the air, and says this place smells like shit! He goes to the next one and the next one. They all stink. You know what’s in the bag, right? Yes, he is carrying a bag of manure (so the story goes). A Zen Myth of Sisyphus.

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Our teachers tell us that we can be confident in beginners’ mind paired with insight as we stand, sit, lie down and walk. What is important is how I hold this confidence, or rather, how the confidence holds me. The moment my walnut heart began to crack the hiding of my fear was replaced with a sense of being held—sometimes. Held by the sound of mail dropping in the box, rustle of my teacher’s robes, and brown leaves decomposing in my backyard, my neighbor’s voice, the smell of snow in the air, or exhaust. Big Mind is another word for allowing the wisdom of ….the universe to rest in our little pockets. The expert and beginner put their hands together, and clap for everyone and nobody.

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Here’s a little practice regarding transitions I learned from Billy- who- plays- piano about 25 years ago: Every time you find yourself in a transitional moment turn around 160 degrees and look all around. Listen, smell the air in this place; feel what is touching the ground. That’s it. When you get out of the car, in a doorway. The possibilities, as Suzuki Roshi says, are endless.

 

 

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