DANS 5RYTMER® - Birgitte Rasmussen

A wave of spring  

This morning I fell the dawn with a deep intensity, the beauty of the sun and the fating moon. The light was calling me and I put on some warm clothes and crossed the field into the forest. I followed no path but crossed the wood, and saw a beautiful hill. 

I wanted to dance a wave in the powerful sunbeam at the top of the hill. Standing here, my eyes were dazzled by the sun. I went into flow, felt the weight of my body while the clear sunbeam turned my flow down into feet and soil. The feet wanted to move further away, to the light shadow made from the winter dressed Scotch pines and my feet were amazed by all this different lights of shadows. They danced in light shadow, which turned the landscape into clear shapes and forms, further away the shadow was darker, the trees higher and the air colder. My feet danced between small holes in the ground, pathways to the homes of the long-tailed field mice, bigger holes under the huge tree roots forming homes for badgers and shapes of creative art. The soft forest floor called the feet and soul to connect into old walking patterns of distant ancestors thousands of years back into the dawn of human beings and my body followed these old moving patterns. My feet were deeply connected to the soil of nature, moving slowly like walking and dancing in one flowing rhythm. I was whirled in my flow and I was danced by feet of nature.  

I listened to the birds. A woodpecker drummed his territory, the sparrows sang love songs of spring – and through this listening I felt new rhythms entering my body, the heaps moved, the feet changed its patterns into a sharper rhythm, clearer, I was approaching staccato.

A thought came into my mind, told by a good friend two days before. ‘I’m not in stress; I have just enhanced my tempo,’ he said while he with fast movements took some food, touched my body gently and left again.

My body and heart felt the busyness of nature, the huge work to be done to turn the beauty of the life wheel and get the new generation into this world, and my feet and heaps listened and followed the steps of the season of early spring: to build up and to be with focus. 

I listened deeper to the singing birds, the ghetto blaster rhythm of the forest. I felt my feet dancing in lots of broken branches, rinsed for bark by winter hungry fallow deer. The movements of feet and heaps became part of whirling nature and the busyness of the birds. I couldn’t follow those two rhythms in one movement and holding both my body entered chaos. Following the chaos with open eyes the landscape seemed to change. The huge Scotch pines entered a new dimension and looking up into the branches I saw only creative art pieces, ever changing images and my heart softened into tear-dimmed eyes. I was no more dancing in nature for a moment I had become part of it. The soft forest floor carried my soul, the busy birds sang to me and the trees formed magic art pieces above me.  

My heart sang songs of ecstatic pulsation and the cells of my body vibrated from gratitude. The movements lightened up into lyric. I felt the lightness of the dawn and the power of the sunbeams. An insight came to me, a dancing thought told me ‘Life could be like this; adulthood and responsibility need not to be heavy, it can be proper and easy. It’s all about willingness to do and let go.’ I danced my ecstatic dance with joy and inner smiles transformed into outer happiness and I danced to the birds and the deer and to the huge pines and the tiny young beeches. I danced in the sunbeams and was dazzled in the light, I danced in the light shadows and saw the clear landscapes and I dances in the cold and dark shadows and knew that life holds it all.  

And in the holiness of these moments my dance became more still, trying to express and reflect it all, being aware and being here with nature. 

I walked the forest in the sunbeams until I returned to a bigger path. I looked around, where was I - I was lost…

Fear entered my happy mood, confusion covered my clear mind. This lasted for seconds, but felt longer. Then I recognised my area – and I knew that sometimes new impressions change the images of everyday life and in this moment I need to be aware and not step back into the old film roles of habits.