nature (2)

3/16/10

Barefoot Barding








Yesterday I wrote about the joy of doing your true calling and what you most love as a profession. The Barefoot Bard, Mick Dodge, graced my yard and home with his presence today and began to share some Earth Gym training tips. He is a truly
inspiring example of someone living his dream and walking his talk. One need only spend a short time with him to feel the practical brilliance he carries and shares so freely. He brought over one of his favorite old growth forest sticks and swinging stones in the elk skin bags and invited me to try dancing with them. It was SUPER FUN and really anamazing full body training in resonance with the land. He also really is inspired by butoh, my daily practice and dance.

We are scheming some very exciting new and great collaborations--so stay tuned for many announcements and new training films soon to come.

He sent me the message below after our session and when I read it I felt it said everything I wanted to share about today's dance and more, so he is the first MomoButoh guest writer/bard to appear in this blog. Hope there will be more great guest contributions like this to come.

Yoish!
Thank you for sharing food and foot. It was a good day and good sharing for me.

I have been on foot for a long time stealing shoes and reminding soles to foot the dance of the land and remember their primal (prime animal) inheritance by stepping out of the "defeeted" stride of domestication and follow their naked soles into wildings of the land.

Engaging a "Animist" like you shifts me into a relaxing form, a rhythm of thanks, shifts me into sitting with the fire and breathe "as" wind. Understand that you inspire the desire to move, your practice and presentation, your present to the land, your
gesturing of the wilding sings the calling of the land and flames the desire to move. I saw the wind rise.

So why sit? Because it is rare and so wonderful to share with the fire what i witnessed.

Dance "with" the fire, until you dance "as" the fire, is a mantra i was taught while in my cave in the Misty Mountains on the Island of River (the olympics).
I had built a fire in my cave and began to train in the movement forms that i had been trained in, fighting. Shadow boxing, throwing punches, kicks, fighting with my shadow on the cave wall. But the fire would distort my moves, weave them into other fluid forms, and so i began to move as those shadows. It was at this time, after years and years of
training as a fighter, and training others that i realized that i
never liked fighting. What i liked, what i was craving, what i desired was the dance. So i expanded my movement, turned into the fire and filled my wind with the words, "Teach Me!. I accepted the fire as my teacher and began to follow my feet in tracking it's source.

I carried this practice out into the gravel bars, would build a circle of stone, and wait for the sun to rise and begin dancing in the circle, moving as a coal, build into a flame, learning to balance my fire, my desire. I would stay in this cirlce of stone as the flame, as the desire, from sunrise to the sun setting beyond the edge of the land. I realized that the solar fire, was released through the wood of a fire, the wood, trees releasing it's flow. The fire and trees taught me how to craft and cultivate my internal desire. How to place a goal on the desire, as i placed coals on the fire, and use my wind to release the wilding.

So i sat last night at the fire, did not dance. I sat and honored and gave thanks for engaging you on this path, reflected upon your path and dance, and gave thanks for your footing of the land.

Dance As Fire,
Run As Wind,
Embrance the Stone,
Flow as the Water within,
Train in these four ways while in your naked feet,
And with your Touch wide open,
With your heart wide open,
With your soul wide open,
the earth will teach!

Barefoot Bard's Earth Gym Poem spoken with Mick Dodge, danced by Momo to music by Muzikas.
See video:
http://maureenfreehill.blogspot.com/
"Stick and Stones" Duet with Mick Dodge & Momo to music by Calexico
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Gifts of Grand Mother Maple

4/7/10


Gifts of Grand Mother Maple




















In late March I gathered with
Mick Dodge, Pushkara Sally Ashford & her son, David, for a singing celebration just before her maiden off-island voyage of the new SingPeace Gypsy Wagon.

There is an immense grandmother maple tree in Pushkara's front yard that
I was immediately drawn to dance with. Mick filmed and pointed out a
huge dead branch hanging on its last limb over our heads. Mick was
musing happily for the day when "Maple would gift this beautiful staff
in her own time."

Well, with last Friday's crazy wind storm, the time came and Mick salvaged the limb and began fashioning staffs, including one for me. When I went to visit him today, I was feeling cold, stiff and in need of motion and building heat. He started a fire in his tent wood stove exclaiming how much he loved "freeing and receiving the gifts of sunshine, wind and rain from the burning wood."

As I listened to his orally transmitted teachings, I began a daily dance to
explore and train with the gifts of grandmother maple's staff and the
fire's heat. I had never so consciously attended to receiving the
elemental gifts of heat & light from the stored energy of the sun as
they were released though wood burning. My body and soul were warmed by
the physical heat as well as the living poetic story of it all. I felt
my connected place in a larger context and community of all life. Mick
showed a manuscript from his friend's book-in-progress about how
changing our bodies can change the world. He told me that he never
trusts the written word or "talk" of an author till he can see the life
and "walk" that s/he lives. I was honored that he continued to say my
blog writing worked well for him because he sees that it arises from the
way I LIVE and share directly from this embodied experience and not
from disembodied LOGOS--intellect, logic and rational ideas from the
thinking mind alone.

In the film below, you can listen to some of the teaching he delivered in the
way he prefers-- directly, spontaneously and orally. He is also
sometimes called "the barefoot bard" because he naturally exudes and
transmits poetic expression of his inner life and wisdom derived from
decades of practice and experience of inner and outer wilderness
landscapes. I am grateful for our growing collaboration, understanding
and support of one another's gifts and intentions to walk our talk
because this path can be a challenging and sometimes isolated one.

I look forward to seeing the carved maple wood staff emerging as an empowered
object over time and practice with it. Much as indigenous people have
done for ages with their sacred tools, this training object will contain
and reflect the lessons and gifts I receive while working with it and
eventually it will be passed on to the next generation full of this
wisdom. There is a clear grace and rightness to this natural progression
of passing on gifts.This practice has been lost in much of our modern
social life and education if we forget to honor elders and ancestors for
their profound contributions-we are literally living extensions and
transmissions of them. I hope I can continue to remember and receive
inspiration from grandmother maple, Sense Say Mick, Kazoo Ohno, and all
my relations that have truly walked their talk before me.


The theme sentence of the upcoming event sponsored by MomoButoh Dance
Company and LiveEdge Woodworks
upcoming event is "Ask not what the trees can do for you, but...." You are not what you think say or do...you are the sum total of your actions, ideas and words that come TRUE. What are YOU doing for the trees? If you are going to be anywhere near S. Whidbey Island on Friday May 7 do not miss the amazing benefit for Whidbey Camano Land Trust's Trillium Land Purchase at Woodland Hall. Contact Momo TODAY --entry by reservation only through MomoButoh info at maureenfreehill dot net!


video video

music: rachels

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