Transcriber: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Carmen Cruz
Delta Rae: (Song: “Bottom of the River”)
# The cock’s gonna call # in the morning baby,
# Check the cupboard # for your daddy’s gun,
# Red sun rises # like an early warning,
# The Lord’s gonna come # for your firstborn son
# His hair’s on fire # and his heart is burning
# So go to the river # where the water runs
# Wash him deep # where the tides are turning
# And if you fall, # and if you fall
# Hold my hand
# Ooh baby it’s a long way down # to the bottom of the river
# Hold my hand
# Ooh baby it’s a long way down
# A long way down
# The wolves will chase you # by the pale moonlight
# Drunk and driven # by a devil’s hunger
# Drive your son like a railroad spike
# Into the water, # let it pull him under
# Don’t you lift him, # let him drown alive
# The good Lord speaks # like a rolling thunder
# Let that fever, # make the water rise
# And let the river run dry
# And I said hold my hand
# Ooh baby it’s a long way down # to the bottom of the river
# Hold my hand
# Ooh baby it’s a long way down
# A long way down
# Hold my hand
# Ooh baby it’s a long way, # a long, long, long way
# And hold my hand
# Ooh baby it’s a long way down, # it's a long way down, a long way down
(Screams, applause)
Wren LaFeet: Thank you, my dance partner
on and off for the past 7 years, Kelly Howard.
(Screams, applause)
My name is Wren LaFeet and thank you for coming here today.
The title of my talk is: “Pioneering the New Renaissance Through Movement”
I'm a dancer and an artist with a deep investment
in what I consider to be our planet's greatest natural resource: us.
I come here as a representative
of a cultural movement as well as an individual.
A movement that is using dance and music as a launch pad
for evolving our society.
And dance is a very immediate and ephemeral form.
The moments of beauty are gone almost as soon as they appear
yet there effect on us can be profound because their nature is of the body
of that which is common to all humans.
Something visceral is transferred to us by watching others in motion
as if we were the ones moving.
And when we dance for fun, free-form without planning,
we experience that activation in our whole being.
And when we engage in movement with another, in partner dance,
we are given the experience of sharing that heightened state
in relationship and co-creative union.
Now social partner dance has been an integral facet
of societies throughout history.
In the United States, swing dancing helped to define an era.
In the cultural revolution of the sixties, free-form partner dance
was given a popularity which continues gaining momentum to this day.
In her talk “Tending the Sacred Fire,” at TEDxBlackRockCity,
Shive Rea points out that more people are engaged
in free-form dance today than ever before in our civilization's history.
Galvanized around “Gathering to Dance,” groups of all ages around the world
are co-creating community, valuing authentic connection,
communication, and right relationship with one another.
We dance as a way to know each other, on a level that transcends words,
we listen and understand in a different way
when we are connected to another person physically.
This form of heightened, immediate communication
develops an intimacy with our own bodies, those of others and the earth we dance on
that is transforming our awareness.
People have different reasons for going out,
participating in social dance, as varied as they are in their taste for food.
I began to learn Lindy Hop in 1999 through my passion for musical theater.
San Francisco's vibrant dance halls still humming with the swing revival
of the early 90's were the perfect training ground
for my role in the timeless tale of “West Side Story.”
People from all walks of life came out to dance,
computer programmers, dotcommers, massage therapists, college professors,
and high-school students in love with the 1993 film “Swing Kids” .
In my thirteen-year journey with dancing, there have been many reasons
that I've kept up with it.
I now dance because I believe
that dancing in partnership with another person,
movement with others, brings us closer to the realization
that fundamentally we are all the same, we are all one.
For me, the new renaissance looks like a gigantic dance floor of bare earth
where people of all cultures, professions, religious beliefs
and sexual orientations can come to express themselves free of judgment,
be heard and have their feelings and ideas reflected back to them
respectfully and in co-operation rather than competition.
How many people here like music?
That's good, that's good, that's a good number, yeah.
Music is an incredibly powerful force in our world,
it has the power to make us laugh, make us cry, collapse,
and best of all jump out of our seats and start moving
in incredibly complex ways without making so much as a pit-stop
in our brain's higher-reasoning center.
(Laughter)
Our bodies just respond to it.
In a study of 120 babies, when exposed to rhythmic music,
every single one began moving their bodies to the rhythm of the music.
It's in our DNA to celebrate our physical existence
by, in so many words, shaking what are mama gave us.
In swing, in salsa, tango, waltz, many other traditional partner dances,
there is a pattern step that largely determines
the movement of couples.
Still it's up to a lead to interpret the music and make decisions
about when those moves happen, and it's up to a follow
to interpret their direction and respond in their own unique fashion.
This process of making rapid-fire decisions
actually re-programs dancers' neural pathways,
increasing intelligence, making them more agile mentally,
and as studies show, more resilient to the onset of the diseases of old age.
I use gender-neutral pronouns on purpose, because in this culture
that we are co-creating, there is an alchemy of gender occurring
in which we no longer choose to associate leading with masculine
and following with feminine.
Men lead men, and women women, and the lead and the follow
can change many times in one partnership.
So what happens when we take away that basic step and we replace it
with non-patterned improvised movement,
rooted in connection and common vocabulary,
and in place of traditional music we layer in, oh, I don't know,
whatever we're feeling at the moment,
maybe transcendental, acoustic rock-and-roll?
(Acoustic rock-and-roll music: The Senate: "Spectacle")
Suddenly the decisions and cues we have to make
and pay attention to become a lot more complex.
WL: We're not choosing a pattern # Drink it in / Like a thirsty boy
WL: to latch onto, we're just responding # You've never seen a machine
WL: to each others ideas. # could drink so much joy / She and I
# Together we run # Until the day runs out
# and tomorrow don't come, # But now I crave / Around me her love
WL: So conversation, (Song ends)
(Applause)
a conversation, can start to emerge in which no-one's following,
and no-one's leading, we're just listening to each other,
and responding to each others' ideas.
And those ideas are generated by the music that we're listening to and driven by it,
we're engaged in spinaesthesia,
the act of hearing, the act of feeling and seeing music and sound
as movements in the body. I had to get that one out! Thanks.
We are inventing a language
that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers;
a language that empowers us to connect and affect each other positively
and powerfully by means of an energetic exchange.
There's a genuine investment from the other person,
and because we're connecting so intimately, our experience becomes more layered
and complex and likewise more meaningful.
The whole of human experience begins to come through our dance.
Through participating in, teaching, and discussing partner dance,
I have experienced, shared and facilitated incredible insights
into personal relationships, self-healing, quantum physics,
discrete energy systems in the body, spirituality, cultural anthropology,
dynamics of social structure and helping the building of social skills.
So, along with this gender alchemy, we're also experiencing
this massive cultural alchemy.
These different styles of dance and music
are coming together to create something altogether new.
All these communities are coming together and sharing ideas,
the tango and swing communities are going to blues dances and vice versa.
Hip-hop and club dancers are discovering salsa and swing,
more North Americans are developing yoga practices every day.
The blues and tango and swing dancers who are the computer programmers
and massage therapists, project managers and business advisors,
are journeying to Burning Man and Lightening in a Bottle
and Envision Festival and scores of other transformational festivals
that are popping up every year, championing the elevation
of human consciousness.
And they're coming back with, in addition to a new perspective,
all this ridiculous music, ridiculous in a really good way.
And as we dance to it, it's making us think faster
and requiring us to be clearer in our communication.
It's allowing us to claim our freedom to express ourselves
and have our own experience within a partnership.
Wow! Fostering trust and intimacy.
We're not adhering to any one culture, we're accepting them all
and creating a new one as we dance through the differences.
We're using dance as a metaphor for life,
and a tool by which to navigate through it.
And as we create and teach this language together,
the goal is to each other how to speak, not what to say.
We're empowering one another to find our own voices amidst a chorus,
learn how to blend and craft duets and take solos,
and whatever tune inspires us to sing, to sing it loudly.
I'm going to invite Kelly back out here for a short performance
of what we like to call dancing together.
As of yet we've not been able to find a term that encapsulates
what we do and have everyone agree on it; the challenges of community.
And I guess we're going to bend the rules by taking off our shoes, on stage,
so, thank you and enjoy the day.
(Applause)
(Dance music)
(Dance music ends)
(Applause)