An heightened state of awareness we call presence

About a year ago I attended a workshop with Benoit Lechambre and noted down a couple of quotes from his teaching. One of them especially stayed with me. It went like this:

“It is the energy flow that makes the movement, not the will”.

This suggests that movement happens when the will of the self is surrendered to a flow of energy. Is this energy flow a cosmic thing? This interpretation might, in my opinion, take the attention away from the more interesting listening places. The flow might indeed be connected to some kind of universal stream, but to identify it and hook onto it we probably need to look inside ourselves. I believe we can tap into that flow, or rather allow that flow through us, by deep listening of our body ecology: an heightened state of awareness we call presence. When this awareness expands to the performance environment to include the spectator, then we have a chance to create an experience that can be universal: a performance which is not a representation, but a participation to a global dynamic.

As this thought reconnects to a previous post of mine in this same blog, I would like to quote it, including Michael Klein’s comment, in order to complete the discourse. I wrote:

Lately I more and more find myself looking for a place where “I have no choices”, where I have the clear feeling of what has to be done in order to support and sustain the dance. In that place the choices are somehow inevitable and necessary, or imperative if you like. Creativity or compositional skills seem no longer needed, while what seems to be paramount is to have fine awareness and appreciation of the moment. In that place I am not the governor of the dance, but rather its servant, I am permeable, transparent.

And Michel Klein commented:

This statement should be cherished and contemplated upon. A place of ‘no choices’ – the presence unfolds not in ideas but in instances. A ‘choreography of revelations’ and no salvation in sight!

 

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