Does Your Mother Know?

I am still smiling thinking about all the delightful stories shared at our Dancing Heart™ sites last week. Our storytelling prompt was: Tell us about something you did or wanted to do that your mother didn’t allow.

I watched as participants began to wiggle in their chairs, smile and blush. At Deer Crest Assisted Living, Bill shared that he skipped school and went down to the river during the winter and dangerously rode the floating ice. We heard wonderful stories of bikini bathing suits that were banned (but worn in secret), talking late at night to new boyfriends, sneaking the car out to go dancing and not finishing everything on the dinner plate.

We honored our mothers that week and we also celebrated our spunky, wild youthful selves!

Carla

Dancing with the May Pole

How glorious it was to celebrate May Day with each of our Dancing Heart sites. May Day has a long history as one of the world’s most celebrated festivals.  At each of our sites–Veterans Adult Day, Carondelet Village, Wilder Adult Day, Deer Crest  Assisted Living, Struthers Parkinson’s Center, and at the Veterans Hospital  we too celebrated, honoring the earth, making blessings and dancing! With merry making we sang and danced around the May Pole.

The May Pole dance originated from Celtic, Ancient Roman and Indian cultures. The May Pole is a long wooden pole anchoring long individual rainbow colored ribbons.

Everyone participated–in wheel chairs, walkers, standing–we all shared in bringing this ancient celebration to life. We sang an old May Day song, stomping our feet, weaving together the individual ribbons, symbolizing a connection between us and the earth! Rejoicing that summer is here!

Toe and Heel–Jolly Rumbelow

We were up long before the day oh!

To welcome in the summer to welcome in the May oh!

Summer is a coming and winter’s on its way oh!

Happy May Day!

Carla

Murmurations

Kairos Dance Theatre Company is developing a dance based on Murmurations, the amazingly synchronous unison movement found in nature among birds, fish and kindred creatures.  With generous choreographic input from Dance Professor Emeritus Mary Easter, we’ve been studying the nuances of tuning into each other to move together as one in the here and now. Come see how the Murmuration of our Differently-Abled Intergenerational Dance Company develops June 18th at Loring Park or June 28 at Minnehaha Falls Park in Minneapolis, both at 7pm.

Dancing With Poetry!

Kairos Dancing Heart was thrilled by a visit from Gary Glazner, founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project http://www.alzpoetry.com/. We seemed to understand each others’ language right away.  The Dancing Heart session we did together reached heights of rhythm and motion and poetry and feeling. Gary was well versed in the value of  kinetic embodiment of words. There wasn’t a sedentary soul in the house when the poetry and movement got flowing.

Soon after the collaboration with Gary,  we were emboldened to try out a poem with the guys at the V.A. Day Program in one of our regular Thursday morning sessions.

The Eagle by Lord Alfred Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands    (craggy hands all round the Dancing Heart circle)

Close to the sun in lonely lands (hands dance the distant sun and the lonely eagle)

Ring’d with the azure world he stands (hands and arms encircle the blue-sky realm)

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;  (undulating like the sea)

He watches from his mountain walls, (lone lookout on a sheer rock face)

And like a thunderbolt (clap) he falls

( a full eight count on the final “Faaaalls”)

                                                                Happy to say the veterans got into the feeling of the poem~~!

  Now Gary has taken “The Eagle” on to a group in Warsaw Poland and Kairos Dancing Heart is using poetry as part of our  mix of dance, music and story improvisation.

~Peter~

Had the honor of dancing with a lifelong dancer today

Had the honor of dancing with a lifelong dancer in late stage today,,,still the soul of grace.

How wonderful it is to dance, create and play together

It is Tuesday morning; our last Dancing Heart at the Como Park Apartments. We have been here for 12 weeks. It has been an engaging, heartfelt 12 weeks. I feel as though I am now sitting among friends. We have shared personal stories about our lives. We have danced and grooved to jazz with “Mr. Smooth”, Irv Williams, learned Irish jigs, created name poems, moved lyrically with colorful scarves, played improv games and so much more.

Today, Cris our fiddle player and teaching artist is with me. He kneels down and plays personal Swedish songs to the women in the circle. We find ourselves in the heart of spring, telling stories of first loves, best ways to flirt and the miracles of Eros. We giggle and giggle!

How wonderful it is to dance, create and play together. . . we wrote our last poem together:

It is spring!
It is spring the birds are in the trees.
The flowers are blooming.
Sitting on the porch in the spring the trees are blossoming, watching boys go by hoping they’ll stop.
Mary winks at me across the circle my heart jumps into the light.
Your wink is a wish of understanding.
I loved Kay but she was interested in Tom.
I’m crying for him because he got jilted at six.
Snap out of it, it’s over.
My husband when he first saw me, I was dancing. I want to meet her, he said!  Our histories are now continuing.
We met on the airplane. We didn’t flirt.
We were flying high!
When I met my husband, I was dancing with another guy.
Just to look at him, I fell in love with him.
I have been married for 62 years.
We loved him up to the last minute.
It’s spring, It’s spring, It’s spring!

Thank you Como Block Nurses!

Carla

Kairos Dance Theatre Company Begins New Season

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Monday 2/27/12 marked this season’s first rehearsal for Kairos Dance Theatre Company. Squirrels just waking from hibernation dozed on the sunny window sills at the Loring Rec Center while dancers stretched and remembered how good it feels to move together on the sunlit wood floor surrounded by the beauty of Loring Park. Artistic Director Maria choreographed a new dance based on waltzing couples. Kirsten and her babe-in-arms-in-sling, Torunn, start the piece with a deep cradle rocking sway. Joe and Diann join in with a sweet waltzy promenade. Sally and Leonardo and Irena and Peter join in with big floor-covering patterns. All converging in what feels like a village coming together. Not bad for first rehearsal. Already a new piece blocked out and ready to be polished for performances for:

Celebration for Joan at Patrick’s- 7pm March 22

The Vital Aging Network -7pm April 3

V.A. Day Program -2pm May 5

Loring Park – June 18

Minnehaha Falls Park – June 28

Big Circle With Social Workers and Students

Kairos Dancing Heart staff  (Maria, Carla, Peter, and intern Leonardo) were recently invited to co-facilitate at The Group Work Institute’s 2012 Spring Workshop at St. Catherine University’s lovely Coeur de Catherine Ballroom.

In a circle of 72 people including professors, social workers and social work students, we introduced interactive elements that we use in Dancing Heart™ sessions. We shook hands and made eye contact with all 72 people in the circle. We created a safe space in the circle by modeling movement to music and assured people that any way they chose to move would be okay. We breathed slowly together, then added deep slow movements to music. We worked with familiar music in ways that helped ensure group members were able to experience mastery in their movements. We worked toward the flow-state concept of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. We wove in patterns of play as described by the National Institute for Play.

We were pleased to discover that the workshop participants seemed to recognize much of their own work in what we do daily in nursing homes, adult day programs and assisted living settings.

One social worker commented, “This shows we can get to ‘affect’ in a large group just like that (finger snap)!”

Another observed, “some of the best communication is nonverbal.”

By the time the workshop ended we were all in three concentric circles dancing and singing “Oh How Lovely Is the Evening” as a three-part round.

The group had indeed achieved high affect and bonding.

~ Peter ~

Tap Is Back

Tap Is Back

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One of the tools we’ve found delightfully useful in our Dancing Heart™ bag of tricks is adaptive tap dancing. People are surprisingly enthusiastic about strapping on the elastic, Velcro and steel button tapping straps we’ve developed and tapping out a rhythm on the hardwood sounding boards. It’s as though people’s  lower extremities are grateful for the rhythmic expression that soon fills the room after folks get the hang of it.

Circulation to the feet and lower legs is often an issue for people, especially when walkers, wheelchairs, or just sedentary habits become part of the picture.  Initial curiosity about the tapping soon turns into a contagious chorus of percussion which persists for surprisingly long periods of time. Simple but effective, many Dancing Heart participants have been surprised, delighted and energized by this Kairos tool of the trade.

What Makes Your Heart Dance today’s edition

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This week we’re asking the question “What Makes Your Heart Dance?” Here is our latest contribution from Gary.

22 years ago I attended “The Great Waltz,” an annual event put on by a classical radio station in San Francisco. My childhood friend Tracy had invited me I think to introduce me to her co-worker Margaret. The event featured a live orchestra and people were encouraged to dress in formal wear or period costumes. It being San Francisco there were many men with beards dressed in ball gowns. As Margaret and I were waltzing, couple near us slipped and fell. I felt so bad for them that I faked a fall to help them feel less awkward. Margaret thought it was funny and she went down as well. The next year Margaret and I were married. All these years later nothing makes my heart dance more than being locked in a waltz and looking into her sweet blue eyes as the world spins around us.

We are loving the responses we’ve received and would love to know yours?

We’d love to hear from you! Share your comments below.