Heart Reading … Day 32

Learning to dance from a dog requires subtlety

It has been a very long time since I have danced, like gone to a dance for the purpose of dancing. Though I have to say I enjoyed a wedding in May, which had been postponed a year and scaled back due to the Coronavirus, where I danced with family members for a couple of hours like the good old days of 2019 and before.

The dance style I long for is called contact improv. I had an intern who minored in dance and who had told me that of all the styles they had studied (and there were many) this was the “most weird.” And to any uninitiated, to anyone steeped in traditional dance like ballroom or other formal individualized dance modes of expression, reading another body on a dancefloor, particularly someone you’ve never met, may be slightly offputting.

While doing yoga, interrupted by my lovely hound dogs one of whom gets right into my space — as if it were her fully entitled own, I started reflecting on this longing for contact improv — or what many call spiritual dancing — with humans. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that these loving ladies (Rosie and Luna) welcome me into their puppy piles and are incredibly affectionate. And even though the “dance” with my dog is not intriguing or a bit etherial, it is improvisational and Rosie is a great teacher.

I appreciate these downward dog moments with Rosie (Luna is less inclined; she’d rather just lick my ears). We sense each other’s movement interest and it is a deeply satisfying relationship that is simple, clear, not effortless but entirely comforting in its certainty. I appreciate her openness and how receptive and responsive she is to my movements. She never gets “complicated.” It is usually me who moves away or pushes her sharp nailed paw off some part of me that she wouldn’t know causes me pain (the play she and Luna does sometitmes makes me cringe when they crack jaws or skulls together).

What I have learned from Rosie’s dance instruction is that it gives me joy to experience her so rooted in wherever she has placed her body. She rarely moves when I walk by her; she behaves as if all spaces are equally ours to be in — and yet she is gracious when I move her. Rosie is very expressive and sighs loudly when she is bothered (like when I move too much and disturb her sleep).

And this notion — of all spaces being equally shared by all who are in it — fills my heart with peace.