It was in an introductory class of Contact Improvisation in the Centre Civic La Barceloneta, with Sebastian Garcia Ferro.
That was the third workshop I did with him, He could transmit lightness and fun in his classes which made it easier to dare and let go in the improvisation. He always used to say, “the first partner you dance with is the floor. Learn to dance with it. Feel gravity. Feel your weight and the space around you. Let be taught by the ground.”
In that room, close to the beach of Barceloneta, you could feel the salty breeze in the air along with the humidity of that summer morning. The heavy air of so many people breathing and sweating after a long hour class.
There is where I experienced the intimacy with a piece of myself that I was not familiar with.
We started standing, still, breathing and listening to our own breath and beating heart. I was listening to how that rhythm was making the blood traveling along my body. The pull of gravity, the weight of my body in the sole of my feet, and how that music was giving a pace to the inner movements in my joints, in my bones. Maybe it wanted to be an outer movement, but maybe not. Anyway, it was there, this inner dance, the small dance they call it in Contact Improvisation.
At that moment I felt that me, the real me, my true nature was that inner dance. Sometimes, the dance I experienced before was filled with some strange movements coming from an unknown place.
Breathing. My beating heart lifted a shoulder, an elbow, a wrist, and my fingers. That was it! I couldn’t feel any movement that was not familiar anymore from that day on. I couldn’t separate myself from that small dance that sometimes gets throughout my skin and people can see it.
It is a subtle energy that starts within and infuses my breath, and the beat of my heart. All these rhythms pace my movement. I call it the inner dance. And it is always there. Always. Sometimes feels quiet, sometimes feels loud but always is present.
Workshop by Tijen Lawton in Gent-Belgium (picture by Rudy Carlier)
