"May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve." _ Sappho

Friday, April 11, 2008

An Article Worth Repeating


As posted on my art blog, I felt it appropriate to bring this article over as I had originally posted to my culture blog. I am seeking financial support to move forward toward my dream in Somatics. Please read on:

"I have discovered a very cool idea today! Read about it here!

This concept looks like one of the many enlightened work-culture environments of our children. Hybrid workers! Boarder-walkers! Creative culture of which I have been dreaming for a very long time, to one day be actively inspired by, as I re-emerge to help and participate in the world-at-large again.

Now that the child-raising years have shifted to greater independence for all within my family, there is new life-opportunity available for me at last. Time available to explore syngergizing areas of experience, thought and vision under which I have been building a longterm career foundation over parallel time.
A skill-set foundation to satisfy through meaningful responses, strong life-long intuitions for new forms of work: Somatic-centered studio work that benefits overall individual (particularly women & girls) well being, in community cultural well being! A continuation of parallel time perspective.

I am actively seeking investors! If you are the financially supportive type, of an innovative entrepreneur, you've come to the right place. Begin your contact with me here. Thank-you!"

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Dancer Jock Soto Looks Back on a Life in Tights (and Fishnets): Part of my own history and part of my own future health fantasies


Photo: Gwendolen Cates / ITVS

When Jock Soto retired from the New York City Ballet three years ago, he'd spent a quarter-century becoming one of the most celebrated male dancers in the company's history. Half Navajo and half Puerto Rican, stocky and athletic, Soto didn't fit the danseur noble mold, but his grace and strength as a soloist and fame as the surest of partners (famously to iconic ballerinas Heather Watts, Lourdes Lopez, and Wendy Whelan) cemented his reputation as one of the most universally beloved dancers in New York. PBS's Independent Lens today airs Water Flowing Together, a documentary about Soto's career and rediscovery of his heritage. Vulture caught up with Soto, who now spends his days running a catering business with his partner, and talked to him about the dances in his past and the cooking show in his future.

Now that you're retired, is it strange to see all this footage from your career?
I first saw it in San Francisco at the gay and lesbian film festival there, and it was kind of shocking! I felt like I was watching somebody else. It was quite emotional.

There's a funny story in the film about your dad taking you to your first ballet class…
My dad, he didn't know what to do. My mother told him he had to buy me ballet slippers and tights, and I had a little T-shirt or something. I took them out of the little bag, I was changing in the backseat, and he had bought me blue fishnets! He sort of didn't look at the package. I was like, Oh, God, what am I going to do with these? But I had to wear something! I think I probably put shorts over them.

When you first came to the city, what were your first impressions?
We lived on a reservation outside of Phoenix, so we didn't have big buildings, and all that is here. It was such a bigger scale of everything, I was just in awe. You think back on a situation like that. It's like you walked into Alice in Wonderland. I just remember the doors at School of American Ballet were huge; the studios were huge. I’d been dancing in a strip mall outside Phoenix. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

In the film, we see how you appeared on Sesame Street, in People … it seems like another era, in which dancers really were stars.
Well, I never considered myself a star, I was just someone who worked and worked and worked and did my job every day. And there were times we were slammed by the press too. I would think of Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins, when I was sneaking into the theater, starting at the top fifth ring and sneaking down. By the time Chaconne was being performed and I saw those two, they were stars.

You're also one of the most choreographed-on dancers in the company's history. Did that make you feel like you were abandoning the company in any way when you retired?
You know, it was time for me to leave. I felt it was a good time. I was 40. Everything started to hurt in the last few years. I wanted to be able to leave the stage, put on a pair of shoes, and go out and have a nice dinner, you know? Without sitting there and having my knee hurting or my back throbbing. And of course it's a big loss. But it's not brain surgery; anyone can do it.

Well, you've mentioned a dream of having a cooking show. Any chance of that soon?
Still workin' on it. If anyone has any ideas, they can contact me! The dancing chef. I'll do anything.
–Rebecca Milzoff

After watching this particular subject on Independent Lens on PBS Television, I had to post this article and thereby return even briefly to a significant shred of my own childhood roots!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Is Seattle to be my new home?


I am looking for work in a setting where I fit basically. Fit into a mutually friendly work environment as a hybrid with real knowledge and experience. A cultural hybrid who has pioneered work and life in "alternative culture" from studio artwork to a past in traditional dance to research work on Women in the Arts to my long passion for nutrition as health, etc.
Of late, it seems as though critical mass is showing up on the horizon as I have renew ed my long "Artists & Somatics" Google searches, Very lately, I have actually been able to make contact with other forms of intelligent hybrid life-forms out there!
I am discovering women who have been pioneering in parallel universes combining earth-centered, body-movement integration with sustainable living practices in all the creative and initially innovative voices as can be imagined and discovered by one person searches!
After reading an incredible body-centered manifesto (see the pdf file: THE BODYBASED ACTIVIST: A PATH TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY WITH BODY AS GUIDE!), I knew I had to make contact with its author. Which has since led me to this person's work.
My writing style is not meant to be misleading or too mysterious rather leading to the discovery, so click on the links where they are inserted in the text! It is part of the adventure; to discover what is there awaiting your own discovery! Especially when those discoveries concern work that is occuring on this scale.
Since all of the newly discovered links referenced in this post are in the Seattle and near vicinity, I am wondering out loud... as well as planning a little exploratory trip with résumé(s) in hand, next week-end!

Let me know what you are finding, and what your discoveries make you think about.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Reposting: Somatic community call for input

Having just http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifreceived my first response to this post from October of 2007, I want to bring it forward for obvious reasons. If anyone out there is reading my blogs and can begin to see their interrelatedness, AND is interested in supporting me moving forward in my goals to earn my degree in Somatics, and/or my art projects, to make this bodysense awareness visual, please read on in an inspired manner!
My future posts will be an examination of the article: "Contents of the Somatic Practices and Dance: Global Influences," orignally printed in Dance Research Journal (2002) 34 (2) 46- 62, as written by: Martha Eddy, CMA, Ed. D. (Listed in the "Voice in the Disciplines" section of this blog!)
I invite you to respond to my inquiries and examinations, as well as, to the contents found in general in this blog as it motivates you.

The first response I post here to share: (Thank-you for this!)

April 2, 2008 4:09 PM

Santa Barbara Graduate Institute said...

Hello Somatikos,

My name is Alice from Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Your blog caught my attention because we work with Martha Eddy and Moving On Center as well as other Somatic leaders such as Pat Ogden at the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute and Greg Johanson. I thought you might be interested in checking us out as SBGI offers the first doctoral program in Somatic. Christine Caldwell, Judyth Weaver, and Susan Aposhyan are some of our esteemed faculty. Our website is www.sbgi.edu or you can email me anytime for more information.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

March-whoosh!

WOW! A whole month gone and it has been a tumultuous one!

While I recently failed abysmally at being a back-up care-giver in the home of children with Sensory Processing Disorder, I have moved on. Wrestling with the return to art-making!

Reflecting back over my brief encounters, I know strong intuition crossed my path with this incredible family for many reasons. Reasons that that keep me moving toward my own goals. Goals that initially combine art with Somatics until I make enough credible visual/kinesthetic "noise," and accrue experience enough to combine together and begin the formation of a competent intuitive voice, attract resources that can and will help me put all combined to that point with education, to earn my degree in Somatic Psychology.

This is my field- body awareness, to exchange with the world and earn my daily bread, where the world is "conscious enough".

What more can I say until I know how?

A sudden flash of inspiration hits me! I am dancing my way to optimal health in the body/mind during this big transition time_ just the right resources are already appearing on the horizon! WOW! April, a whole new month! Stay tuned...

I have also wanted to reconnect with Breema recently. No better way than to start with the nine basic principles. Here they are:

The Nine Principles of Breema

Body Comfortable
When we look at the body, not as something separate, but as an aspect of a unified whole, there is no place for discomfort.

No Extra
To express our true nature, nothing extra is needed.

Firmness and Gentleness
Real firmness is always gentle. Real gentleness is always firm. When we are present, we naturally manifest firmness and gentleness simultaneously.

Full Participation
The most natural way of moving and living is with full participation. Full participation is possible when body, mind, and feelings are united in a common aim.

Mutual Support
The more our Being participates... the more we are able to support life and recognize that Existence supports us. Giving and receiving support take place simultaneously.

No Judgment
The atmosphere of nonjudgment gives us a taste of acceptance of ourselves as we are in the moment. When we come to the present, we are free from judgment.

Single Moment/Single Activity
Each moment is new, fresh, totally alive. Each moment is an expression of our true nature, complete by itself.

No Hurry/No Pause
In the natural rhythm of life energy, there is no hurry and no pause.

No Force
When we let go of assumptions of separation, we let go of force.

***A new fan to Breema.***