After Grief Comes A LOVE-FURY-DANCE

After Grief Comes A LOVE-FURY-DANCE 

In 1996 I lost my childhood home on a Seattle hillside after record breaking days of snow and rain.  THIS land was where my child-soul came to know and move with the BIG LOVE MOVEMENT.  It was my connection to something that lifted me from the dysfunction of family, public and dance education, society and religion.  In 1999 the fractured home, torn apart by the sodden-shifting land, dramatically and mysteriously burned to the ground!  

I still dream of the land that was lost: That small place of heaven on earth that helped me survive and move through the pain and deep dysfunction I felt all around me as an extremely empathic child. 

In the last five years the loss of my childhood home has come to represent for me the beginning breakdown of the white-supremacist-disease that has infected water, land, atmosphere and every body of this earth. I came to know my pain and loss IN AND AS the lineage responsible for the theft, destruction, genocide and enslavement in what became The United States of America––and a white owned hillside in Seattle.  

My grief expanded into grief for the collective body. And then it became a LOVE-FURY DANCE for transformation.  

I MOVE as ART & PRACTICE for overcoming the conflagrations of our lives in pandemics, in societal structural injustices, in racial trauma, and in EARTH-RAGE storms, heat, drought, and wildfires! I move with earth to become an ancient-future-now, fully human-being; choosing daily to participate in the evolutionary rhythms of earth-becoming-to-overcome the mistakes of our species.  

For me, this time also remains critically personal. It seems that my words and my presence-of-love for others has not changed mental rigidity in support for Trump––and all that he represents that led to his power. I have not been able to speak openings into woeful denial of the historic collective harms and pains in need of transformation.  This earth-song wail for massive transformation will remain urgent regardless of who is in power in government.  

This is a call to all of us to embody movements for resilience, healing, and transformation. To move past dualism toward wholeness within the landscape of our collective body of earth.

To not feel global, national, personal pain, to just get on with disembodied-busy-ness-“as usual” is to perpetuate a white supremacist body-being pattern. This pattern infects all of us with ever-increasing destruction and pain. 

WE must slow down to FEEL the grief; rise in movement with the smoke and ashes in a loving-fury for change.  WE MUST know what ALL of our ancestors knew before the rise of the western dominant culture (or maybe simply human-gone-amuck dominance and fear-control of earth and each other): THAT to sing and move, stomp and clap with earth IS our being and becoming into evolution, communal-love and not just well-being, but MORE-BEING.  

Would you like to join me in this movement as ART & PRACTICE for increasing resiliency in the midst of personal and collective pain in order to get back out there and do the work we are called to for reparations, healing, transformation, rebuilding and grounding lovingly-strong in the face of mental rigidity and hard-hearted denial???  Would you like to expand your capacity to feel the BIG LOVE MOVEMENT surging through you with the possibility of peace and joy even as you dance through the storms and fires of grief and fury??? 

JOIN ME in OUR DANCE OF TODAY for OVERCOMING the past and moving into the FUTURE.  ALL of this begins with every breathing moment in the BODY of EARTH.  OUR BODY.  

Photos: Michelle Smith Lewis

FALL 2020 OFFERINGS beginning 9/23-12/18:

Mondays 5-6pm PST

Wednesdays 9-10am PST

BIG LOVE MOVEMENT 1st Sundays 10-11am PST 

karinstevens@gmail.com for zoom and payment link $15-$25 ($5 students/unemployed)

A portion of your payment will go toward a fund to support dancers and composers with Karin Stevens Dance AND individuals in financial need who are seeking transformationalist support in this challenging time of Covid. 

Friday World Wide Web Dance for Global Transformation: 12:30-1 FB LIVE @karinstevensdance FREE