Dance – A Form Of Expression, Or A Route To Self-mastery?
Dance of The Dolls
Two tiny little dancers, maybe five or six years old, are
carried out on the shoulders of two village men. They look
like beautiful dolls – pert little faces made up with
dark eyebrows, huge kohl-defined eyes with long lashes, pretty
pouting red lips. Headdresses of gold foil flowers mixed with
the fragrant pointy petals of the cream cempaka flower. Eyes
closed, they begin their dance, moving in perfect harmony,
tiny hands like demented butterflies, fingers cutting the
air like scissors, hands forming complex gestures like yoga
mudras in the air. Little faces darting moon-like to left
and right like a cup rolling on a sea-borne shelf, independent
of their graceful necks. The music reaches its height, and
at the last clash of the gong, they drop suddenly. Their mums
rush forward looking concerned, and catch them just In time,
as they slump in what looks like deep sleep. The priest in
crisp white garb hurries up with holy water and revives them
with a splish from a leafy frond. They awake, looking surprised
and a little dreamy.
In Bali, all dance, music, drama – in fact any kind
of artistic expression – takes place in the temple.
There are no ‘theatres’ or ‘dance halls’
as such. All performances are for the gods. (Even at tourist
performances, you will usually still see priests with holy
water.)
On a recent Light Language course, I learned about reading
auras (the coloured energy field that surrounds every person),
and I’ve been intrigued to notice what happens to Balinese
auras when the dancing begins.
The gamelan band enters, pristine in colourful deep pink
sarongs with mandarin jackets of beige and crisply tied headdresses
of pink and gold. Typically Balinese, they look immaculate
as they seat themselves at their instruments – a motley
array of gongs ranged from about ten centimetres up to fifteen
centimetres in diameter, laterally mounted like so many upturned
cooking pots, to the great hanging gongs of about seventy
centimetres with the deep, soft ‘Burrrrrrr!’ that
is the background to the music. The gongs are mounted on highly
ornamented gold carved wooden benches with elephants, trees,
and scenes from the ‘Ramayana’ Hindu epic. One
instrument is carved to look like a turtle with five flat
cymbals fixed on its back. The player crouches behind the
turtle and clashes away happily on top with another cymbal.
As the players begin, their auras are almost all green and
yellow – colours of healing and action respectively,
with a little blue (communication). The colours reflect the
chakras – seven colour energy wheels located along the
spine of every human from the base to the top of the head,
each with a different rainbow colour from red at the base
to white at the crown. Two dancers emerge dressed as exotic
birds, waving long cobalt fronds of their dresses as wings.
Their auras are a deep flash of brilliant purple and orange
– purple for connection to spiritual wisdom and orange
for flow. Suddenly, as they begin to dance, the colours disappear
and I can’t see anything except what I think is ‘charm’
the name of a special colour that is beyond normal sight (a
bit like dogs being able to hear high pitched sounds that
are out of the range of normal human hearing). ‘Charm’
is a special colour for talking to other life forms and consciousnesses.
Wow! This is amazing! Now they’re all doing it –
the gamelan band have completely gone into charm as well!
I have noticed that this seems to happen to all Balinese dancers
as soon as they start to dance.
The dance is really a kind of ‘yoga’ I suppose
– a special way of moving the body that taps into subtle
meridians or energy points and allows a connection to be made
to the divine – or to people on other planets. Whacky
I know but this is what it looks like is happening to me.
You only have to look at the dreamy expression of the dancers
to see that they have gone ‘someplace else’. In
fact, all Balinese people seem to have the knack of very easily
going into a kind of trance and connecting to something sacred
and special within themselves. You can see it in their faces
when they have just been praying – the light shines
out from them like a fan of whiteness emanating out and up
from their chins.
This light is represented in a lot of Balinese art where
women are shown in paintings and in the decorative woven palm
leaf hanging ‘chili’ mats (no relation to the
spicy vegetable, it’s just a name) with kind of triangular
faces. I think it is the light shining outwards that they
are depicting.
My daughter, who is half Balinese, adores trying Balinese
dancing. The music starts, and she is completely ‘gone’
– absorbed in the wiggling hand and finger movements,
and the lithe body postures, lost in the experience. It’s
good that she is starting early (Cahya is two and a half)
as Balinese dancing takes years to master. It looks deceptively
simple because of the inherent grace and femininity (even
the guys wear full make-up) – yet even just the body
posture on its own is incredibly difficult.
Here, try it: place right heel at left instep. Bend knees.
Bend them more! Bend them a bit more! Now, go down a bit more
until your bottom is sticking right out. Raise your elbows
to above shoulder level. Raise your hands in a salute, pulling
back the fingers as far as possible, tucking the thumbs into
the palms. And this is just the starting point! I have taken
some Balinese dancing lessons and it is incredibly strenuous
– just standing in the posture was enough to make me
break out in a sweat at the beginning! On top of that come
a range of very complicated movements – the swaying
side to side ‘march’ with head waggling from side
to side slightly and bottom sashaying (legs still bent in
that agonising and contorted position) – mimicking the
graceful walk of Balinese women as they walk to temple in
their tight sarongs. The complex hand movements, foot movements
and facial movements – happy and sad expressions, wide-eyed
looking to left and right – all must be perfected and
synchronised perfectly.
The Balinese are willing to commit to years of dedication
and study (maybe ten) to perfect their dance (or any of their
many beautiful crafts such as painting, wood or stone carving,
mask making, offerings making, for that matter). They have
the patience and discipline and are willing to spend the time
to achieve a kind of mastery and excellence which is highly
admirable. This discipline permeates their society and contributes
to the great control they have over themselves and their emotions,
which enables them to relate to each other with such refinement.
Unfortunately in the West we have lost most of our old crafts,
and the ‘apprenticeship’ structure that went with
it, that used to help us to create mastery and excellence
in ourselves.
twirling and leaping around a large cavernous church hall.
This kind of dancing, known as ‘Gabrielle Roth Five
Rhythms’ is specifically designed to tap in to the feelings
and expressions of being human, and to encourage learning
of new ways of relating. It is a spiritual development tool,
actually. And it is a lot of fun!
I first got into it by attending the old ladies session –
quite funny really, I was about thirty-two years old, dancing
with five or six really old ladies, creaking around stiffly,
yet all wonderfully game to try something new – very
inspiring. Old ladies were about the right level for me at
the time – I was so out of touch with my body –
had no idea even where my arms and legs were, let alone what
they were supposed to be doing!
Trying to let go, or at least, let be, the jangling ‘I
can’t do this, I look stupid’ tangle of thoughts
in my head, I began to learn how to move to the ‘five
rhythms’. First, we warm up by listening to different
parts of the body in turn. The feet – ‘Let them
go where they want to!’, then the ankles, knees, legs…’Let
your pelvis go!’ calls the teacher. Then we move the
belly, chest, shoulders, arms, wrists, hands head, spine,
then the whole body. This is a great exercise actually because
it gets you out of the head – I highly recommend it
as a way of relaxing and getting into dancing in any venue
or even at home.
The body is a great resource – it stores and remembers
everything that ever happens to us. Our teacher, Sue Rickards,
explains ‘did you ever hit your thumb with a hammer,
and forget to yell ‘OW!!!’ (a very British thing
to do!!). ‘Well, that OW stays in your body and creates
tension. We need to find ways of letting it out!’.
The founder of ‘Five Rhythms’ Gabrielle Roth,
the self-taught dance guru, noticed that music always seems
to fall into one of five types of rhythm. These, she calls
‘flow, lyrical, staccato, chaos and stillness’.
Different types of music fit into each rhythm. They form a
natural cycle, which she calls a ‘wave’.
‘ Flow’ is just that – flowing, soft music
and flowing soft movements. ‘Lyrical’ is lighter
than flow, with more skipping steps – Irish music fits
well. If you dance Lyrical for a while, it naturally breaks
up into ‘Staccato’ – much more angular movements
cutting with the hands and arms and a strong ‘out breath’
– ‘hoo! – haaah!’. This is the rhythm
of action and cutting through, getting things done. Staccato
eventually becomes ‘Chaos’ – which is complete
wildness – my favourite – the caveman energy,
like African dance with wild body movements – this is
the energy of ‘breakdown to breakthrough’ –
the creative space where the old is destroyed and the new
begins. The music is wild and crazy, maybe Nirvana. Everybody
has a great time. Finally, chaos is over and we move into
‘Stillness’ – the spacious quiet music of
ballet perhaps, often with balletic movements with a lot of
standing and stopping, static positions, slow movement, and
a lot of grace.
You may have already guessed that different forms of relating
naturally go with each ‘rhythm’. In ‘Flow’
we kind of discover ourselves, the limits of our own being,
where our own bodies are. ‘Ah!! So that’s where
my toes are!’ (and maybe now I’ll stop falling
over them!). In ‘Lyrical’ we start to meet others
– we often all end up skipping around the room, linking
hands, doing reels, laughing with the infectiously joyous
Irish music. In ‘Staccato’ we discover our boundaries
– what we are prepared to accept and not accept. Where
we end and others begin. We work with ‘cutting through’
life and the actions we need to take. ‘Exercises’
are sometimes a part of the dance – the teacher will
ask us to walk across the room in staccato, cutting through.
It’s a power dance.
Sometimes, dancing staccato, I’d discover that I needed
to say goodbye to a particular dancing partner, even abruptly.
And that this was ok! (this was something of a revelation
to me! And what we learn in the dance spills over usefully
into everyday life…)
In ‘Chaos’ we connect with our creative power,
and the creative power of the universe. Feel the flow of the
energy running through us and the joy of being alive. What
we can make together, what we can co-create. Remember our
roots, connect to Earth. Leaping, bounding, laughing, meeting
joyously.
In ‘Stillness’, we come, finally, to the beauty
and bliss of relationship. Heaven on Earth. After the ‘journey’
through the other rhythms, this one is the deepest –
the quiet, maybe classical music, with lots of space –
people often just holding each other, or gazing mesmerisingly
deep into each others eyes, like lovers. Boys and girls, girls
and girls, boys and boys, no different. Sometimes balletic
movements of incredible grace, people really joining each
other, so beautiful to watch or be in. A real memory that
we are all one.
Then the ‘wave’ starts again – and we’re
back to ‘flow’ in a never-ending wheel of life.
Afterwards, ‘all loved up’ – full of happiness
and joy, a gang of us dancers would brave the beery smoke
and fug of an English pub, and do karaoke. It was such fun.
I made wonderful friends from the group and we had the best
times strutting our stuff, being silly. Taking what we learned
from the dance into our lives, and into our relationships.
Once, five of us went to a friends house and just cuddled
all night. It really makes the most lovely, loving connection
among people.
Sometimes in the dance, I discovered a real friend, someone
I could really connect with. Such a powerful form of communication,
dancing with someone – it is really a language. There
is so much to be said and expressed. Sometimes there is conflict
or anger. Sometimes there is parting and letting go or leaving.
Sometimes having to say ‘NO!’ or – softly
– ‘yes!’ Much of modern dance music is ‘staccato’
by the way – a lot of stomping around, a lot of ‘power
stuff’! (Are we trying to meet each other, or fight
with each other?) I remember our wonderful teacher, Sue Rickards,
commenting that staccato doesn’t have to be all about
‘no’ – it can the be joyous ‘yes!’
- ‘Yes! – I DO want that! Come in!’ (Remember
that next time you’re in a night club won’t you!)
For more about Five Rhythms, you might like Gabrielle Roth’s
enjoyable book: ‘Maps to Ecstasy‘, (Thorsons).
Website: www.AcallTodance.com has all you need to know, including
details of UK events – the site ‘noticeboard’
gives a great flavour of how it feels to belong to this wonderful
warm and loving ‘tribe’. I recommend it.
NEXT ISSUE: Poetry. Dropping into the gap between what we
say and what we really mean.
Jeli Lala created the ‘Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery
and Art’ at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud, with her
husband, Putu S. She has studied yoga and many other spiritual
practices for more than ten years. She writes “As a
life-long artist, I’ve been exploring my inner world
since I was a child. In this column, I will share some of
my personal experiences and spiritual methods – hopefully,
you’ll find this interesting, and maybe it will give
some ideas for your own journey”.
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
