SOMA Festival

Going to a black box theatre is like going home for me. It is my church. It is where I have prayed for many years of my life. It takes me back to college, to New York City, to LA…it reminds me I am an artist even if I became a teacher.

Somatic movement is fascinating to me. So few people are even familiar with the term. Somatic education is the study of the body using modalities such as Alexander technique, The Feldenkrais Method, Rolfing, and/or Continuum Movement. Different practitioners will define it differently, I’m sure. But it has changed my life.

I was watching a performance tonight at the SOMA Festival. To feel the resonance of another’s movement in your own body is so powerful. It is the power of empathy washing through your tissues in micro-movements. When I would read the brochures and see the pictures of Continuum, I didn’t get it. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night. It was almost like my dead sister, who was a dancer, led me to the brochure and told me to attend the workshop. The founder of the work was a professional dancer. The work brings me back to me. Witnessing the performances brings me back to my sister.

Tonight, I saw a dancer who was in Paul Taylor's Dance Company for ten years. As she did a duet, it was so incredible to witness wave motion between two people coupling like DNA. Words fall short. Videos don’t do it justice. Some things, you just have to be there.