Tag Archives: Lin Lucas

Fringing soon

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Thorsen’s“Higher Ground” takes a penetrating look at mental illness in contemporary society. This work is a butoh performance for 5 dancers. the dance explores the struggle to maintain control in the face of madness, and the humanness and vulnerability of a soul coming to grips with their own unraveling. The inspiration for the work comes from the documentary “The Library of Dust” based on photographer David Masiel’s photos of the Oregon State Mental Hospital. Masiel’s photos document the decay of the hospital and the 3500 copper canisters which hold the remains of residents of the mental hospital who were unwanted in life and in death. The dance honors the journey for wholeness, and explores the interior life of our most vulnerable, the people on our streets, the resilience of our human spirit, and the courage to go on in the face of adversity.

 

Fringe Me Sept 20th – 23rd West Hall

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“Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,
in me are lives I do not know the names of,
nor the fates of,
nor the hungers of or what they eat.
They eat of me.
Of small and blemished apples in low fields of me
whose rocky streams and droughts I do not drink.
And in my streets—the narrow ones,
unlabeled on the self-map—
they follow stairs down music ears can’t follow,
and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,
in hours uncounted by the self-clock,
they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other loves.
There too have been the hard extinctions,
missing birds once feasted on and feasting.
There too must be machines
like loud ideas with tungsten bits that grind the day.
A few escape. A mercy.
They leave behind
small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale lives in.” jane Hirshfield

30/30 tonight New Dances at Velocity Dance Center 1621 12th Ave 8pm

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“In the process of creating an indigenous form of modern dance, Japanese butoh founders discovered a universal poetry of the body. Rather than transcending the human condition, butoh asks us to descend into it- down into the turbulence, awkwardness and uncertainty of life- and from there, deep in the thick of things, we discover our own healing and capacity to love unconditionally.” Lani Weissbach

Training Notes

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Higher Ground

Whenever we begin to evaluate, deciding that we should or should not do this or that, then we have already associated our practice or our knowledge with categories, one pitted against the other, and that is spiritual materialism, the false spirituality of our spiritual advisor. Whenever we have a dualistic notion such as, “I am doing this because I want to achieve a particular state of consciousness, a particular state of being,” then automatically we separate ourselves from the reality of what we are. …when we formulate a second judgement, “I should be doing this and should avoid doing that” then we have achieved a level of complication which takes us a long way from the basic simplicity of what we are. The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego. If anything more than this is laid onto our psychology, then it becomes a very heavy, thick mask, a suit of armor.
It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego’s constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgement, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.
Chogyam Trungpa

Training Notes

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When you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you develop natural elegance. Your life can be spacious and relaxed, without havingto be sloppy. You can actually let go of your deprssion and embarrassment aboutbeing a human being, and you can cheer up.

The result of practicing the discipline of warriorship is that you learn to stop ambition and frivolity, and out of that, you develop a good sense of balance. Balance comes, not from holding on to a situation, but making friends with heaven and earth. Earth is gravity,or practicality. Heaven is vision orthe experience of open space in which you can uplift your posture, your head and shoulders. Balance comes from joining practicality with vision, or we could say, joining skill with spontaneity.

First trust in yourself. Then you can also trust in the earth or gravity of a situation, and because of that, you can uplift yourself. At that point, your discipline becomes delightful rather than being an ordeal or a great demand… learn to float…Each step is a dance.  Chogyam Trungpa

Training Notes

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“The body is a sacred garment.
• There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
• The body says what words cannot.
• The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
• Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.
• No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.
• Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
• Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.”

Martha Graham