Nostalgia in Winter

It is Monday, yes! and it is 11:23, the perfect time to start this blog. I know though that I will not finish it now, so I will complete it in the late afternoon or even evening. But it feels good starting it right now.

Yes it is winter I know but, here in Prague the winters have these moments where the sky feels so low that one can touch it, the space doesn’t breathe and the light, or the absence of light, thrusts me into a space of nostalgia.

Although I like motivating myself and always find a way to dig into my sources of enthusiasm (because I am a lover of life), sometimes during these grey days I feel that dullness is approaching my space. And I don’t like it! So I find myself in a nostalgic mood for brighter days… and it takes me to the past.

This morning while walking in the forest (even the forest couldn’t motivate me) I had these thoughts coming to me… I remembered my time at Bilgi University, when I was giving the Body based workshops and the Creative Process Course, at the Performing Arts Department. Those were amazing times, full of adventure, creative power and a lot of enthusiasm. We all did our best to make this department work, we all burned with a creative power to create a department where the students would be discovering the body and acquiring skills to create their work and spaces for work so that they can perform and continue to create.

In those years I was traveling back and forth between Prague and Istanbul, teaching, dancing at full length and I became a mother. Those were also the times when the name Somatic Dialogue came to me, and the students at the University were thrilled to experience the exercises. While seeing them I was more and more motivated to create and try out the tasks, and see how all those exercises were landing in them. They were so open and willing to experiment. 

I remember one of the most daring workshop series about Touch with the students. We had exercises of trust and physical discovery through contact, watching each other, eyes closed but touching each other, expressing through dance and being seen openly by others… It was touching for all of us, and the students were really going for it.

At first of course all had to encounter some basic taboos: touching was intimate. Once at the very beginning I asked them if they felt some arousal by this intimate work. And of course slowly they admitted it. So I promised them that if they want we can go beyond that and experience 5 times more depth in the encounters. And very quickly they dropped the sexual layer and we travelled through the diverse landscapes of sensuality created by movement and their bodies.

There with them the “nestling” was born. There the non-physical touch and the various distances between the bodies was explored, there we created the concept of “one can never get close enough: even when you think you are so close, with one exhale and a little surrender to gravity you can get closer”. 

You can see in these photos how close we got and how sincere our relationship was.

Those explorations with the students were of course aiming at improving their body language and awareness because they were young performers. But we also went to realms of the imagination, thinking and meaning making, because the bodies exchanged their secrets beyond the words, and ignited each other with curiosity.

I have often heard from students that they fell into some kind of a depression afterwards, because the connection was so strong and then in “real” life they were lacking this connection with others.

I always have fallen into a nostalgia also then, after leaving them. Usually in the plane I would think about the scenes I witnessed and tears would run down my eyes. They were so beautiful and so themselves. I think it is really there that I decided to dedicate myself only to this work. And I have wondered a lot about what is real? The circumstances that we experience during a session when we are in connection with ourselves… or the everyday life where we “cannot stay connected”.

Today I am more prone to think that the real stuff is when we are in connection and when we stay in awareness of our actions, and that we take time to think about them. I think that it is the real stuff to feel and trust what we are feeling. I think it is real to live according to what we feel, and to act as we think. Once we start pretending, or creating illusions the reality slips away and we are not clear anymore.   

But then what is real and what is illusion right? The never ending questioning.

Therefore I always like to go back to the body, to the concrete and the simple, and there, if I stay long enough, if I am patient enough the magic happens.

Well the magic sure did happen for me in those years back at Bilgi University. And that magic still sparkles in me and  in everyone who passed through the Performing Arts Department.

And of course it is evening by now… I had some other idea in my mind when I started this blog.. but something else dictated this one and I just surrendered. Once the fingers start dancing on the keyboard one shouldn’t interfere. Forgive me dear readers if I have been too nostalgic today… Blame it on the weather!

Meet you next week.

Stay in love!

Just B!