I cannot believe it has been so many years since my last post. Looking back, however, it makes perfect sense. I was so engaged with having my art be my life while attempting to recover my spark from an impossible employment situation (that unfortunately provided hours of laughter) that I set aside few, if any hours to document what was happening. And if you know me, you know that when I’m in a perfect storm like that, I find its eye and hunker down to…study.
And I did! You might have noticed the extra sections here on the website about Somatic Activated Healing™. I received my certification in 2022 and have been in service to healing the world through dance ever sice. Don’t get me wrong. I been done been doin dat! This time I do it with a full sense that I am authorized to go forth. For many of us Gen Xers in tradional arts, we would be the erstwhile culture bearer, but our elders and/or mentors are still around living from the fruits of their labor OR, COVID took them before we felt we were fully annointed to walk through th eotherside of the gates, back into community, carrying the sacred bundle. Kinda frustrating.
Now we find ourselves looking for classes to take or a studio to use and there is no longer an acceptance that beocming better in order to great things requires repetition, humbleness, and time. People want to work less, sleep less, weigh less, pay less, save the environment while traveling more, shopping more (hiding that fact from themselves by doing it mostly online), drinking and eating more. They want to be paid a living wage but want to be waited on hand and foot at a discount. In this climate, getting people to bring their earthsuits to a dance class just for the feeling of being there can become tricky business. With this SAH Method™ certification, I can meet you in your lving room via Zoom.
The irony is that I stumbled into the Method because I was looking for a way to address the trauma in the bodies of people I wanted to interview during ART+FACT, a National Performance Network-funded project I helmed twice with my homies, The Earthseed Collective, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. It was great becoming a Southern Artist for Social Change, but it was almost impossible to get to activation phase because of the terror still alive in the memory and flesh of residents of that town. We were looking at 1973 to understand how our parents dreamed the present we were living in 2023 to then create the dreamscape necessary for 2073. Intentionality was going to be supported by deep listening, songs, drums, and dance…except people would come to watch the outdoor West African dance class from the safety of their cars.
We had an ongoing West African Dance class at Foxfire Ranch, even after ART+FACT drum healing sessions stopped.
In 1973 my little town integrated their public school system during Christmas break, sending a terse letter out to white families that the local high school had no. choice in the matter because “seperate but equal” could not be proven in the district. That Christmas, white separatists and supremacists spent the holiday erecting what became known as ‘seg academies’ all over the region. The parent meeting, rallies and fights that made that moment happen had left their mark in the collective imagination of all. Additionally, white networks of surveillance went underground, but continued to keep tabs on Black and Indigenous people. So while I COULD give an African dance class on the courtyard with live drums, I could also find doors closed in fear, interviews for the podcast cancelled, and local news outlets pretending to have not received our press releases.
Stairway leading up to gallery of pre-1973 class photos for Holly Springs High School in the Marshall County Museum, Holly Springs, MS.
We had super cool shit planned for the performance part that woud have accured after the memory and object collection phase. In fact, I just managed to get a Mississippi Art Comission grant to make the crockpot tietravel devices FINALLY. I feel odd because my collaborator had to close their business because the building was sold out from under them….that’s for another post.
So I still practice Somatic Activated Healing™. If I didn’t, I might honestly be dead or at least have had a massive heart attack by now. Getting my unexpressed emotions out, learning to stop giving meaning to every little feeling, and practicing dropping the story and staying with the feeling has radicalized me in wild, wonderful ways. Teaching it as acting technique alongside Stanislavski technique fueled me intellectually as well as psychologically. Giving a session in a corporate environment to groups who are struggling to find their way through tumultuous transformations in the way we do business has been a masterclass. Last November I spearheaded the first World SAH Day experience, showcasing 24 hrs of sessions by certified teachers around the globe via the Lyceum at Rust College. Now I’m launching a business to cultivate a sacred, sovereign space for cultivating imagination, genius, and joy; SAH Method™ is an integral part of this endeavor.
On August 8, 9, and 10 I will have a live offering each evening at Urevbu Contemporary as a soft launch to A Place for Joy LLC. It’s feeling anything but soft. While tickets are available at Eventbrite and Luma, I’m out here in these streets meeting people, introducing them to the Method and the biz, hoping to see them in person on at least one fo those nights. Yes, entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. But I have every faith that those who have been searching for the one thing that would make all the difference will arrive through the doors of this beautiful gallery and get their entire life.
Maybe you will be one of them.
Tickets for all three nights are here, on Eventbrite.