Dance

The other day I watched four dancers, three women and a man, gliding in the intimacy of a small room. I felt wrapped in a gentle serenity, I liked what I was seeing, I was in full harmony with the place and the time.

But I am not able to give my full attention to something for a long time, so my mind was not slow to start floating irresistibly.

It was about informal and formal speech (in French “let up / sustain” one's speech), about the violent rigidity the defenders of the French language show against every attempt to make its rules more flexible, then about the fact that the tensions of the body, which origin is psychological, consume a lot of energy so that they remain stable. Sustain, let up, that is speaking with the voice of effort.

Suddenly appeared to me the meaning of that “delirium”: my mind were translating into a conscious language the dialogue between my body and dance. But what did dance tell to my body? A very simple thing:

“

“Rigidity is what consumes energy. Look at me, I move fluently, but nevertheless with tone, and never do I freeze. I am a unique movement, I am the swaying life, light and supple,”

Dance conversed intimately with me, it lavished on me the subtle nourishment I needed. It spoke about my body, so rigid because of all my tensions, because of my so hard and so shortened muscles, about the almost daily limbering-up exercices I had just starded doing. It was my own body speaking through dance:

“

“Don't fight tooth and nail against my rigidities, for they have protected me from many a violence. If you shake me too brutally, I will tense myself even more, for fear I might break. But be patient and gentle with me: if you are not, who else will be? The stronger my resistance will be, the greater be your gentleness, the more confident be your patience. Allow me to open myself at my own pace, allow me to be the only guide, for I am the only one who knows what is good for me. Do treat me thoughfully, do speak to me tenderly, do love me, for I am you and you are me.”

My mind knew all those things already, for it had read or heard about them many a time. But only my mind knew them. I mean I did know nothing actually.