A womans song
November 19th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Deep in the womb of every woman is her sacred song. Not necessarily of words as she knows them, it may transcend any melody or rhythm that she has ever heard. Tinged with blood and dust, this song lives its longing from the caverns of her sacred womb. Candid, juicy, sometimes impatient, her song reverberates with the beat of her own heart, sending its roots into river stones and whispers.
A womans own song is born into her through the experiences of her unique life and over all of time immemorial. When she hears it for the first time she knows it as if she has already heard it countless times before.
Her song rests quietly inside her waiting for her to bear it, like a child, into beingness. It awaits her while she is absorbed by the ‘stuff’ of life, until a time when her ears are present and her heart primed with pain or glee or glory, her soul in perfect harmony.
No-one call tell a woman how she might find her own song, for only in the folds of her intimate sacred life can she glimpse its presence and, just as it is in life, it is the journey she undertakes to find her song that will reveal it.
So she dances with abandon, sobs until she is parched, holds her children with a tenderness untethered to reason, and shakes in her ecstasy, not even realising that she is the author of her own sacred song in each of those moments.
And when she knows her song it serves her in the morning light, spilling forth from the darkness that precedes dawn, a child at her breast. She carries it with her always and when she can think of no other way, her song rescues her from despair and reminds her of her glory and grace. She fortifies her very existence with its words, and finds ways for it to carry her home to her place of rest and solitude.
When my song came to greet me I could barely utter its words, for it felt too brazen, too raw. I felt the words and the words danced me. The melody more like a spiral than a tune, I could hear the underscore of nature, a symphony of color naked in my ears.
How my song knew me. It was a time in my life where I yearned for my unborn children, ached for truth in the depths of my soul, and desperately needed to embrace my feminine instincts. My song was poignantly and lovingly direct, like an archetypal mother.
My song was, and will eternally be, a measure of my beauty. A virtue that I deeply need to acknowledge within myself and to this life. For as I stand here today and enquire of my heart what it is that I leave behind as a mark on this world, my song plays over again.
A song
The fire in my belly,
Fire
Her voice that soothes my soul.
My sacred heart, my woman’s song
Beloved journey to my home.
Goddess in my darkened womb
A mirror in which I see,
The nature of my beauty,
The power inside of me.
A woman of true substance
A woman to behold
I am all I ever need
My story must be told.
See me wild and untamed
See me lost in ecstasy
See me open, full of peace and life
Dancing in the flames,
See me.
The gypsy in all of us
October 25th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
My performance troupe Zaar Bellydance has just been booked for a gig end November, so we are all reigniting our inner gypsies while we ponder set lists, rehearsals, music and costumes.
Dancer - Latcho Drom
I have spent hours trawling though the catalogue of music we have amassed over the years, searching for new songs to inspire us, a journey accompanied by zills and ud, misma and tabla.
We are a tribal gypsy style belly dance troupe and so the very nature of our dance and costumes is eclectically influenced by cultures far and wide, past and present. Rajasthani, Banjara, Flamenco, Egyptian Bellydance, even Goths have their place.
Like gypsies, we borrow and integrate this richness and variety into something that expresses who we are in this moment, in this place, today. We have been playing with the idea of dancing to a didgeridoo track, music and movement seem to oddly but naturally fall together, the drone of the dig and snake arms in perfect harmony. It’s a respectful cultural borrowing that provides a big picture metaphor for integration and acceptance without a word being spoken.
Whilst the ancient nature of this dance form, as reinvigorated by Fat Chance Bellydance in San Francisco, is sometimes an abstract concept, it is through the amazing film making of Tony Gatlif, a French/Algerian gypsy himself, that I so often realise the privilege afforded me to dance in the shadows of this history.
In particular his films, Latcho Drom and Gadjo Dilo, are glorious and timeless expressions of gypsy culture. Other films like Exils, Vengo and Swing are sensitive and detailed accounts of lives that are simultaneously diverse yet mythically familiar to us all.
Oh, to be able to barrel turn like the young woman in this clip!
