Discovering Angels In A Familiar Room

I walked into the Ocean Springs Community Center expecting to have some quiet time before the children from the art camp at the Walter Anderson Museum came in to dance with the artist's daughter. That's me... And I had yielded to the unusual impulse to offer my elderly, rather ailing body for an hour long dancing session every week in June.

It has been many years since I have undertaken the physical sharing of Airth, and with all the recent indications of age and frailty, I was nervous. So I entered that spacious room full of golden light, its walls sublime with the murals of my father. And children were everywhere. They rushed about finding animals from a list and shouting excitedly with each discovery. This was not the eleven well-behaved children I had expected to encounter. This was a tour bus full of kids from who knows where. And they were free to react with gusto to this unusual treat. The accompanying adults were simply there. Wisely letting go... I did the same. And I danced...

One at a time the children noticed. Mine was a quiet sort of dance: a meditative, nearly slow motion flow from gesture to gesture. One little boy began to move with me...and another. Others came... Their dances were wilder than mine. They were definitely more vocal than me. The speaker I had placed on the chair to convey a variety of music was barely heard. The music we danced to was more mysterious than what one could hear.

When I felt the time was right, I clapped my hands, suggesting that they sit on the steps below the stage. I told them who I was. Awe and amazement...and a bombardment of questions. Some disbelief. This elderly woman was the famous artist's daughter? But they sat and eventually quieted down enough to listen as I spoke of nature as inspiration for creation. Of Walter's love for the natural world as his reason for making art... Of dance as another means of expressing this love. While I spoke I moved, demonstrating the rise and fall of the breathing body, the undulation at the core of all living things. 

By this time the campers had joined us, and I woke up to the fact that the rowdy, enthusiastic larger group would have to leave so my session could begin. But I had fallen in love with this surprising group of angels. I couldn't let them go abruptly. So  we moved together to the rise and fall of our breathing. We rose to become the drifting clouds and the soaring birds, and we yielded to the pull of our beloved earth. And finally, we undulated like the waves of the fathomless sea. All of this as they sat on the steps. It wasn't an orderly dance. Nor was it long... But it was life giving. And the hugs I received from these departing angels would not be forgotten.

As I turned to beckon the remaining children to join me in a the circle that has signaled the beginning of every Airth dance session I have led since the seventies, I knew it as much more than a beginning. This was continuance. And I knew that my participation in this dance would continue to evolve. This dance was ongoing. I would return to this room that had embraced my dancing soul since childhood, and there would always be angels eager to join me in my dance.

An extra of the elderly dancing daughter of the artist in front of his soaring birds.