Stone collector; Heart protector

On February 19, Avodah Senior dancer Connie Procopio and myself traveled to Baylor Women's Correctional Institution in New Castle, Delaware. As we prepare for our annual week long residencies at two women's prisons, we are including the women from each facility in the company's creative process.
This year's theme "LAYERS" addresses key areas within the body where we carry physical, emotional and mental layers. We are specifically focusing on the Head and Heart as centers for exploration. In "Head Trip" we are working on the many different tangents of thoughts that continually draw our attention, sometimes blocking our ability to connect intimately with our surrounding environment and community. In "Stone Collector" (working title), we are looking at hardened places around our hearts and within our bodies that serve as either protection or obstacles in our connections with others and in our yearning to express who we really are.
The women at Baylor explored movements based on chiseling, carving and jackhammering and together we created a short phrase. The phrase included gestures reflecting the actions mentioned as well as movements reflecting being carved. Splitting into two groups, the women followed different leaders improvising on the phrase that we created together; each leader based their movements on the ideas of chiseling, etc. , and the dancers were able to experience the movement ideas for some time. After this, I led "Motivating Movements," an exercise based on the work of Avodah founder, JoAnne Tucker and former Avodah dancer and Board Member, Kezia Gleckman Hayman. The exercise generates movement ideas and vocabulary. The women were asked to imagine they were collecting different size rocks and putting them in a bag or basket. They had to carry the bag around as it got heavier. Then they put the bag down and took out a rock. Next they put the rock on different parts of their bodies and tried to move around the room-even stopping to have a conversation with a friend. This definitely got them using their imaginations as well as experiencing an exaggerated feeling of carrying stones around while trying to go about one's business.
After the movement improvisations, we sat in a circle and discussed the idea of Layers, especially those layers around the heart. I shared the idea that different experiences and decisions get stored in our bodies and frozen, much like the quality of stone or cement; we carry these 'stones' around and may not even realize it! I asked the women to write about this idea as well as the movement improvisations. Any impressions they may have had throughout the class.
Finally, within the circle, different women volunteered sharing a brief movement phrase in the middle of the circle. Each of the volunteers was very brave! New movement ideas were shared: a piece of stone coming loose and falling off, kicking a stone and hurting oneself in the process, throwing stones, carrying the load of stones-setting them down and breathing a sigh of relief,...and surprisingly Appreciating the beauty of one's stone!
We finished the class with a shaking exercise to free the body of any remaining heaviness.
Connie and I drove home to NYC with new ideas and an excitement to go into the studio to explore!