“Muse of Dance”

It was Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance, that first initiated me into the earth plane, helping me to ground out into the body through the body, the confusions and incoherences of my mind finding grounding and graceful expression through my devotion to the motion arts.

They were temples to me.  Places of refuge and realization, dying and being reborn in a womb of color, sweat and gravity.

It was, I realized, a deeply feminine magic, one that drew the essence of the moon into my being in the act of drinking the lunar waters

They were places of infinite dimension, where the mists and colors of consciousness were made manifest, enhancing and opening the space to explore the sensate transformation that was communion with Lady Dance.

Like all aspects of the lineage of forms the idea of pre-made choreographies was unknown to me, ungraspable by the savant nature of my consciousness.  It was an alien thing, something that came into view for brief moments in time only to fade away, the gravity of my self lacking the foundation for it’s concept to land.  It was not so much that I could not follow the choreography as it was presented, but that the very concept of choreography itself, of a pre-made form that was practiced and brought into wholeness with itself was, like all other aspects of form, a passing thing, appearing and disappearing in my mindseye like a ghosts within the mist.

Djoniba Dance & Drum -Embracing the Sun

Yet in this my devotion to Terpsichore was absolute, exploring the many aspects of movement that existed within my self.

The Halls of Dance – Ecstasy and Inquiry

It wasn’t the outer lights, but the inner, where my movements and those of others felt like the movement of ships rippling out across the chroma of the field …

There was an intuitive magic to it.  A sense that I was moving through the colors with my physical movements, that the wash of images and emotions that moved across my mindseye was a verb.

It was a deeply visceral sensation.  One where I could feel the emotions and feelings within myself and that of others, where I felt their dance as a language onto it, the expression of the deeper energies within them in motion and light.

The dance hall was a tabernacle to me.  A place of sacredness.  The modern iteration of the places of devotion and worship to the radiance of Dance herself.  They were places of deep expression and exploration, where through the act of dancing I could work through the energies that were rampaging through my consciousness, finding my way through the glut of images and emotions that flickered across my mindseye in the process.

Peter Ralston – The Way of Effortless Power

As I continued my devotion to Terpsichore through the motion arts I encountered a masterful martial artist by the name of Peter Ralston.  He had created a style called Cheng Hsin and written a book called ‘The Principles of Effortless Power‘ which had intrigued me into the nature of combat and relationship, and I wished to feel the essence of his technique to enhance my own studies.