Corporal expression

“One’s dance is fed by one’s life.” 

Patricia Stokoe

 Corporal expression, also known as "free dance", is an art in which the body is the medium used to tell stories, express emotions and thoughts, and interact with the environment.

 It unleashes the creative forces that lie dormant inside the body.

Why can a writer be passionate about corporal expression? 
 Corporal expression is an art, just like music, painting, writing and many others. The different kinds of art are not separate entities. They are woven into a universal language; they feed on each other.

 Corporal expression is a transformational force. It releases tension stored in the body and uses this energy to mold something meaningful.

 It has three branches:

-Artistic

-Therapeutic

-Educational

 Emotions may not be visible, but they are locked in your body. They can stifle your mind and  bridle your creative potential. Through  body movements, we can materialize these emotions, and let them flow into other creative activities.

  

  Take your hand, for example. Explore all the movements that you can make with it. Let your arm and hand explore the infinite spectrum of movements that you can create. Try different rhythms and choose the ones that suit you. You can use music if you want. 

 Now imagine that the source of your creativity is an imaginary object. Imagine a shape and a color for this object. Pretend you are holding this object with both hands. Rock it, sway it; let your body follow your hands. Discover the story that your hands and your body want to tell while they play with this imaginary object. Invite your body to follow your hands and dance to the music you selected.

 Now release the object and let your hands touch each other and draw something in the air. 

 Are you having fun already?

Here’s another secret: your creative body movements are a personal seal of your own life story; by the same token, a poem is the personal seal of a poet 
 Your body can create its own poem through a unique combination of movements. 
Don’t you think this is fascinating?

Who created corporal expression?

Patricia Stokoe is the person who has been officially recognized as the creator of this art. 
 Patricia Stokoe (1929-1996) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but her native language was English. When she was ten years old her parents sent her to London to visit her relatives. In England she studied classical dance in the Royal Academy of Dance. She also studied modern dance. Years later she studied many different kinds of dance. In 1950 she returned to Argentina.
      Patricia Stokoe developed methods that facilitated the search for movement and expression with personal meaning. She gave several lectures and conferences in the United States, Latin America, Spain, Japan and Israel.
  During her life she worked to incorporate corporal expression in schools and to make sure that everybody had access to this art.

Wind, Sand and Stars

“You’ll be bothered from time to time by storms, fog, snow. When you are, think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, ‘what they could do, I can do.’”

  Have you ever wondered what it feels like to fly?

  Antoine Saint-Exupery reveals the pitfalls, dangers and adventures of flying a plane in the thirties and forties, but his anecdotes go beyond the flying experience. He will also make you float in the air through his musings and profound insights on life and human relationships.

  “Wind, Sand and Stars” is an invitation to fly away to distant places. This memoir will make you relish each moment of your life.

 The sour taste of tragedies and upheavals leads us to mold resilience, strength and comradeship. Saint-Exupery takes us on this path, while he inspires us to reflect on our own life experiences.
   His writing enchants and bewitches me, for he has the ability to put into words the emotions and feelings that we harbor in our hearts. His stories resonate on a personal level.

 As you enjoy his adventures you will visit different places: the Saharan desert, The Chilean Andes, the Argentinian Patagonia, the Pyrenees and many others.

 Reading this book is like embarking on a captivating journey to the past, present and future. His writing has the power to evoke childhood experiences:

“Gazing at this transfigured desert I remember the games of my childhood—the dark and golden park we peopled with gods; the limitless kingdom we made of this square mile never thoroughly explored, never thoroughly charted. We created a secret civilization where footfalls had a meaning and things a savor known in no other world.”

   Yet the greatest feat of this masterpiece may be the journey into the inner self and into the core of friendship and human connections. It has been extremely difficult for me to make a selection of quotes from this book.  I have savored each and every line, and I know I will return to them in search of wisdom and inspiration.

“Once again I had found myself in the presence of a truth and had failed to recognize it. Consider what had happened to me: I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace. I know now what I was not conscious of at the time – that in such hour a man feels that he has finally found himself and has become his own friend. An essential inner need has been satisfied, and against that satisfaction, that self-fulfillment, no external power can prevail.”

“But by the grace of the airplane I have known a more extraordinary experience than this, and have been made to ponder with even more bewilderment the fact that this earth that is our home is yet in truth a wandering star.”

“Men are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming – a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness. All of us, on seeing old friends again, have remembered with happiness the trials we lived through with those friends. Of what can we be certain except this – that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances? Where is man’s truth to be found?”

“Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions.”

"Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded. These prison walls that the age of trade has built around us, we can break down."

“I lay there pondering my situation, lost in the desert and in danger, naked between sky and sand, withdrawn by too much silence from the poles of my life. I knew that I should wear out days and weeks returning to them if I were not sighted by some plane, or if next day the Moors did not find and murder me. I was no more than a mortal strayed between sand and stars, conscious of the single blessing of breathing. And yet I discovered myself filled with dreams.”

 

Choices

"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I want to share this poem by Bekah Steimel.

The Invention of Morel

 After being accused of a crime he did not commit, a man flees to an island by boat. This man is a writer. He documents his experiences in a diary.
 This mysterious island has a museum, a church and a swimming pool.

 Living on this island is an experience of survival and discoveries. This is a place that hides many secrets. The sea catches him by surprise if he is not attentive to the tides. Surviving is a daily challenge. He navigates the vicissitudes of freedom, uncertainty and solitude.

 There are other human beings on this island, but they appear to be detached from him. One day he falls in love with a woman who contemplates the sunset every day. The woman ignores the narrator. Sometimes she reads a book. Sometimes a man with a beard is by her side, conversing with her. This man's name is Morel. Is she in love with Morel?
 Is this woman a real woman? Is the narrator truly in love with this woman, or is he obsessed with her?

 One cannot help but wonder, along with the narrator, if the other people on the island are aware of the writer's existence. Are they planning to catch him? Do their conversations have anything to do with his life?

Suspense, intrigue and magical realism intertwine throughout the novella to encourage our imagination to play with the vivid settings of this enigmatic island, and as we follow the writer's story, the limits between fantasy and reality become blurred.
 We are invited to accept our creativity as the soul of our own existence or as a projection of somebody's desires.

  The Invention of Morel is a novella written by Adolfo Bioy Casares(1914-1999), an Argentinian author who won several awards, including The French Legion of Honor (1981), The Diamond Konex Award of Literature (1994) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1991).

Happy International Dance Day

Three things to remember


 As long as you're dancing, you can
   break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules.

  Sometimes there are no rules.

 Mary Oliver ( A poem from her collection "A Thousand Mornings")

Uncommon Folk

"I have had a joy from which no one can rob me - I have been able to touch some people with my art."
Mary Cassatt

Who could have predicted the destiny of these artworks? 

 This question came to me over a month ago, when I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum to enjoy the exhibition that is currently on display until May 4.

  The Uncommon Folk Exhibition includes an interesting variety of paintings, sculptures, toys, quilts and a few photographs.
 All artists were self-taught. Some of the works are anonymous: they had been abandoned or left behind on farms or on the streets, but they were rescued by people. Now they are preserved because of their beauty, artistic value and historical meaning.

  Let’s take a look at some of the captivating masterpieces.

Calvin Black (1903-1972) created a theatrical environment in the California desert. He delighted tourists with   wooden dolls, wind-driven and mechanical.

Ted Gordon, an artist from Kentucky, drew hundreds of portraits with simple curved lines. Through these lines he created these complex portraits.

I found the story of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) fascinating. He was a simple man who  worked  at a bakery during the day. In his spare time, however, he was a passionate artist. During his lifetime he created thousands of works: paintings, sculptures and photographs.

 He also wrote poetry and recorded his thoughts on a variety of subjects.  What I find very inspiring about this artist’s devotion to art is that he was not attached to the outcome of his creative endeavors.  He just worked on them with fervor.
His ardent spirit vibrates in his masterpieces.

This photograph I took includes some of his sculptures and paintings. There is a whole section dedicated to Eugene Von Bruenchenhein at this exhibition.

 His work has been showcased in different museums in Chicago, New York city,  London and Venice. 

He noted that he believed his art was “ the result of unknown forces at work…forces that have gone on since the beginning.”

 If you want to learn more about this exhibition you can read this article or check the official website.
Have you been to any interesting exhibition lately?
 Talking about creative endeavors, I will take a break from blogging to finish writing a story.
 Enjoy the spring air - or the autumn air, depending on the hemisphere you live on...

What do I need my feet for if I have wings to fly

This is the second part of my post on Frida Kahlo.

 The idea of being deeply connected to nature pervades many of the themes of her paintings. She associated plants with life and fertility. “Roots” is a clear example of this.   In this picture she painted herself with an open bosom that exposes a vine thriving in her body. Frida was unable to carry her babies to term. She had many miscarriages.

Growing and nurturing plants may have helped her to cope with the pain of her losses. She painted plants with great care. The association of plants with life may also be connected with the Aztec poets’ perspective on plants and life: "We are the grass in spring. Our heart comes, it blooms and opens, our body causes some flowers to blossom, and then all withers." 
 Ironically, the plant that sprouts from her body is the Calotropis procera, also known as the Apple of Sodom. This plant contains a poisonous fluid in its leaves that was used by the Indians of Latin America to commit suicide.

 The background of “Roots” is desolate and gloomy, alluding to her loneliness. I noticed the same association in “The Two Fridas” and “Henry Ford Hospital”. The same applies to "The Little Deer".

 In this painting Frida becomes a deer. Her head is crowned with antlers and she withstands the suffering that life inflicts upon her in the form of arrows, a symbol of the fate that befell her.
  I believe she portrays her resilience here. The word “Carma” inscribed on the lower-left corner evokes a belief related to Eastern religions. Her unity with nature is made clear once again. 
 The deer is a male, and this may have to do with the fact that she'd kept a male deer as a pet.

 This is a painting she gave to her friends Arcady Boytler and his wife, Lina. She also wrote a poem to them along with this painting. (Arcady Boytler had back problems and he'd recommended her a surgeon in New York.)

 The deer walked alone

sad and very wounded

until in Arcady and Lina

he found warmth and a nest.

When the deer returns

strong, happy and cured

the wounds he has now

will all be erased.

Thank you, children of my heart,

thank you for so much advice.

In the forest of the deer

the sky is brightening

I leave you my portrait

so that you will have my presence

all the days and nights

that I am away from you.

Sadness portrays herself

in all my paintings

but that’s how my condition is

I no longer have structure.

Nevertheless, I carry

joy in my heart

knowing that Arcady and Lina

love me as I am.

 In 1938 she painted “What the Water Gave Me”, which appears to be a daydream she had while bathing.  This is what she said about this painting:

“It is an image of passing time about time and childhood games in the bathtub and the sadness of what happened to me in my life.” This painting incorporates elements from other paintings. 
  Her toes are mirrored by another pair of fragmented feet, but her legs are not well defined in space. They are also fragmented. The parts of the legs that are not visible are replaced by a variety of symbols and events, suggesting that her life had been disjointed by them.  She gave it to her lover Nickolas Muray, a photographer from Hungary.

In 1945 Frida painted “Moses” after reading Sigmund Freud’s essay “Moses and Monotheism”.  She said she'd painted the sun as the center of all religions, as the first god and as the creator and producer of life. This painting shows a pantheon of gods and historical figures.
 Frida was awarded the Ministry of Education Prize for "Moses" in 1945. I think this masterpiece encompasses the world's collective consciousness, religions and systems of beliefs.

About this painting she also said:

“What I wanted to convey most intensely, most clearly, was that the reason people need to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death. I started painting the figure of Moses as a child. I painted him as he is described in many legends, abandoned in a basket and floating along a river. I tried to make the open basket, covered with an animal hide, as reminiscent as possible of a womb, because—according to Freud—the basket is an exposed womb, and water signifies the maternal spring from which the child is born.”

In "Sun and Life" the sun reappears as a central figure amid plants that look like penises and wombs. One of them seems to harbor a baby. The sun has a face with  a third eye that is weeping.  Her obsession with fertility is present in many of her artworks. 
 The year before she died her right leg had to be amputated below the knee. She became very depressed after this surgery.

   

 This is the last painting she worked on before she died in 1954.  On one of the slices of watermelon she wrote her name, the name of her hometown (Coyoacan) and the words “Viva la Vida” (Long Live Life). She might have tried to challenge death through this powerful image. 

   The year she died the first polio vaccine (Salk) was tested in the United States. In Mexico women were granted the right to vote for the first time. 
  Frida kahlo's legacy is still alive, enshrined in the spirit of resilience that she instilled in her works. Like a beacon of hope, her art continues to inspire and empower people all over the world.

 My next blog post will be published by March 27.