The focus that frequently comes up for me with the beautiful music from 1 Giant Leap is time and timelessness. The way we dance effortlessly between the sense of contraction around time and expansion into timelessness facilitates ‘dancing through life,’ one of our Nia principles.
Each time I step into the space in Nia class and see the whole group moving in unison I feel captivated by the magic of the moment. The uniqueness of each individual flavors the flow of the entire group. I feel apart of something much bigger than myself – as if we are all connected by the quality of the movement. Those beginning movements and accompanying breaths are typically slow, to decelerate the mind and bring our awareness into our bodies. I experience stepping in and slowly moving into a few deep breaths as stepping out of day-to-day clock time, and into the dimension of timelessness. As we start to connect to rhythm, we contract from that expanded, timeless space into the definitive structure of the music and the choreography.
Time, in class, might be experienced as order, rhythm, as knowing where you want to go and taking specific steps to get there. Time creates form, a structure tied to rhythm. Steps and stances. It is where we ‘get down’ and get it done. It gets the heart rate up and the muscles moving. Timelessness can be experienced as formless, chaotic, the sense that anything can happen, moving through the room unmoored from the structure of finite steps tied to a specific place on the floor, or a particular rhythm. It can also facilitate cardio-vascular movement, depending on the quality of the music. I can experience timelessness as a sense of spaciousness not bound by the dimensions of the rhythm. The spaciousness expands from my movement to the space within and outside of my body, dissolving boundaries, sometimes even the illusion of separation, as we are all moving together.
As music changes throughout the class we move between form and formless, time and spaciousness experienced through the different tones, rhythms, and emotions of unique artists. We slip in and out of timelessness and time. This effortless shifting between time and timelessness is a big part of what makes Nia a body/mind/spirit movement practice. I like to use it as preparation for dancing through life: dancing through whatever comes our way: joy, grief, wonder, depression, peacefulness, love. We focus on shifting in and out, moving through space and time and timelessness with the intention of being fully present to whatever comes up. Dance moves us through life with greater ease – physically, mentally, and emotionally, and provides a pathway for moments of transcendence.
For a taste of some of the music from 1 Giant Leap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSW825HqtS8&feature=c4-overview&playnext=1&list=TLJKI4T_fvLtk
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