Kizuna Dance
upcoming dates: to be announced
duration: 90 minutes
location: to be announced
leaders: Erina Mitsumori and Les May
Brief Summary
In Kizuna Dance class you practice expressing yourself creatively and dancing without choreography. Rather than learning dance steps or trying to dance in a way that looks normal or cool as you would in a typical social setting, you follow your feelings and seek your own genuine way of moving. By exploring freedom through dance you develop a deeper awareness of your own body and feelings and gradually become more comfortable being yourself in the presence of others. Together with your peers in this class you create a compassionate community in which it feels safe to open up, move more freely, and connect with other people. Self-awareness and self-acceptance blossom in this supportive environment, and you gain the ability to tap into your own inner sources of creativity and beauty. When Kizuna Dance class is held outdoors you also have the opportunity to receive inspiration from the graceful forms and movements in the natural world as you dance. The deepening connections with other people, with nature, and with yourself which you cultivate in Kizuna Dance will not only make dancing a more fun, joyful, and meaningful experience but will also enhance the quality of your whole life.
Introduction
Kizuna Dance is an unchoreographed movement experience in which you explore freedom of expression and deepen your connection with other people, with nature, and with your own body, feelings, and creativity. Rather than learning dance steps and techniques from the teacher or trying to dance in a way that looks normal or cool, you are invited to move freely in your own unique way. Allowing music and the sights and sounds of the surrounding environment to inspire you, you follow your feelings and dance according to how your body naturally moves.
As you dance the teacher encourages you to bring your attention to your body and move each of its parts as expressively as you can. By doing this you awaken your natural capacity to be more fully aware of your body, to move more freely, to feel more deeply, to express yourself genuinely, and to let your creativity to flow.
You allow your dance to be unusual and you begin breaking the habit of criticizing yourself and other people for being different. Practicing giving yourself and others compassionate acceptance leads to your gradually becoming more comfortable being yourself and moving in your own unique ways in the presence of others. This in turn helps you develop self-confidence and the ability to connect harmoniously with other people despite your differences.
Communicating wordlessly with other people through dancing together also gives you a chance to become more aware of the things that are felt but not spoken in your interactions with others and the ways you habitually relate with others to create distance or connection. The insights you gain from this experience enhance your ability to communicate effectively and build positive relationships with others.
The deepening connection with others and with your heart, body, and creativity which you cultivate in Kizuna Dance will not only bring joy and fun to your experience of dancing but will also foster your capacity to make positive changes in all aspects of your life.
Freedom and Community
During childhood most of us learn that acting and moving differently from others can attract judgement and punishment to us. When we move freely and expressively we're often told we're bothering other people or we look silly, stupid, immature, and strange. We tend to accept these criticisms and believe our own bodies and movements really are abnormal, ugly, and unacceptable. To protect ourselves from further judgement and trouble we develop habits of hiding parts of ourselves, limiting our self-expression and movement to the narrow range of what seems socially appropriate.
These habits of self-restraint and self-judgement seem to help us stay safe, but they also confine us and prevent us from seeing all the options open to us. As we give up much of our ability to act and move freely according to our own feelings and ideas, we lose our connection to our bodies, intuition, and creative spirit. A sense of purposelessness, hopelessness, and emptiness can easily arise in our lives when we endure this disconnection from ourselves and our sources of inner strength, intelligence, and beauty.
Kizuna Dance is an opportunity to practice being free together and reconnecting with ourselves in a supportive, loving environment. Through freedom in movement you take the risk to dance your own unique dance in the presence of others and allow your true self to emerge from behind your social mask. Rather than being judged for your differentness, you find that you are received in a community of fellow explorers who welcome the beauty of your unique expression and enjoy sharing theirs with you.
As you regain freedom of movement and the ability to hear the messages your own body and feelings are always sending you, you progress toward a clearer understanding of who you are and what you want to do. You develop your intuition, your natural ability to know what paths are right for you in life. Feeling your real feelings and being your true self in the context of Kizuna Dance can set in motion a process of positive change in all aspects of your life and bring happiness, healing, and growth in unanticipated ways.
Nature and Creativity
Most of us spend our days in urbanized settings largely separate from the natural world. This promotes a disconnection from nature, a tendency not to notice and value the earth's beauty, and an inability to create a sustainable, harmonious relationship with the environment.
When Kizuna Dance class is held outdoors, you have the opportunity to relate to nature very differently. As you seek your own natural way of dancing, you observe the dance of the earth, water, sky, plants, and animals. The rich pallette of colors, shapes, textures, and sounds around you influence your dance, and you experience yourself as a manifestation of the same intelligence, beauty, and exuberance of nature from which they come. Connecting with nature becomes a way of connecting with yourself and inviting your natural self to emerge. And deepening your self-acceptance and self-understanding through Kizuna Dance in turn cultivates within you the ability to be sensitive to nature and make a larger place for it within your life.
You rediscover the beauty of our world within nature's forms and movements as you dance, and you receive from them an infinite supply of fresh ideas and energy through which to explore your own freedom of movement. By learning to feed your imagination with the inspiration nature offers you lay a foundation of creativity not only for your dance but for everything you do outside this class.
The time you spend observing and connecting with nature in Kizuna Dance also helps you enter a state of relaxed awareness. In this state you feel more content and your intuition can flow more freely, and this too enhances the quality of your life.
Because Kizuna Dance helps you deepen your awareness of and reverence for the earth, it dovetails well with fields in which cultivating a healthy relationship with nature is key such as natural farming and environmental conservation.
Connection
Kizuna Dance Class is thus an opportunity to foster your own health and development on many levels of your being. It is designed to be an effective personal transformation experience as well as a joyful, heartwarming time of connecting deeply with yourself, with the beauty of our world, and with other people.