It is never too late to celebrate dance!

Blog 20.05.2025

…and never too late to write a blog…

Right now I am sitting at the airport waiting for my flight from Izmir to Istanbul. I am on my way back home to Prague. And yes, dear reader it is Tuesday and I am late again. Yesterday was a full day, I was held by centuries old olive trees at Vadimanasir, run by Dilek Kepez and her dream team, giving a workshop with my dear friend and colleague Pedro Prazeres. We led a workshop of Somatic Dialogue in nature with the themes of Touching and being Touched. 30 participants came with their tents to this amazing camp, and showered us with their generosity of presence, surrendering, grace and very intimate work. 

What happened in this workshop?

The ones who are familiar with Somatic Dialogue may guess what might have happened. Of course as always we (Pedro and I) did not know what was going to happen. We had a faint idea in the form of a basic structure of what we were going to do, and after experiencing the first 30 minutes with the group, we left behind all ideas and defined each step as we moved on. The co-creation happened again with this amazing group of people who were more than ready to surrender to the moment, and allow their bodies to move and express. They were eager to discover, and silently willing to listen to what was emerging from their depths. This time I remembered something from the ‘university years’ when I was still lecturing at Bilgi University. The 4 days workshop was a three days of deep experience which gave birth to the last day in which the participants went through a creative process resulting into an hour of celebration where everyone was able to witness each other’s dance in the moment. 

The gift in the gift

The group was a big gift for both of us, Pedro expressed in a single word, which resonated in him, he said for the whole time: Thankfulness. In this big gift of a workshop we, this time Cansu, Pedro,  and I  decided to return the gift in the form of a little improvisation evening. In order to celebrate this event we wanted to perform for them, the participants and further guests from the region. We were lucky enough to be able to invite a fourth improviser, Solomon Kim, with his cello, and at the last moment Nazli Cevik Azazi joined us, because we decided to use the poetic comments of the participants. Now don’t ask who these people are… you have already read about Cansu Ergin here in my blogs, she is the dance activist, dance teacher and choreographer of Izmir. She originally had this idea and persuaded me and Pedro to join her, and I love her for having insisted on this. I had never performed or improvised together with Pedro and Cansu, and it was an honour and a deep joy for me to do so. Solomon Kim who generously joined us on the day, enchanted us and dialogue with us through his wild Cello.  We originally had  chosen 3 poems that were to be diffused into our dance improvs, but on day 3 of the workshop the participants had written so many poetic phrases that we decided to read them all and be nourished by them. Nazli chose some of them and she very delicately read them in the very right moments. We were blessed. 

I know that this sounds like a report more than a blog, but the experience was too magical and enjoyable to not write about it. And who knows maybe some of the readers were there too :) (by the way I still haven’t given up the hope that one day readers may comment or react to my stories). The participants felt and understood that their words shaped our dances. We were dancing through bliss, because the connection between Cansu, Pedro and myself is beyond words.

How is the workshop connected to the book?

In each workshop there is a common learning process happening. Through the tasks the participants experience movement and learn from the feedback of their bodies and also by witnessing others. The participants’ explorations and what emanates from their actions shape our choices and we learn with them, by seeing how our choices of tasks lead to further transformations and “aha” moments. Like this an unusual dialogue happens. We say the word that comes from our experience, they dance and react to the words by their movements, and we read what we can read and propose further explorations. The more they explore, the closer they come to their depth within, and the expression happens. Meetings between them happen in the moment, hands discover feet, shoulders caress backs, elbows nestle into curves, the inside of an arm slides across a spine, and ear is touched by a finger tip, backs meet their likes… invisible lines are drawn into the common space, a landscape is being constantly re-created.

More and more when I go through such deep processes of transmission and experience, do I think about how to really create a form of writing which will be able to define and clearly state what it is that this work is doing.

Fascination is the driving force 

It may sound pretentious, I know, you may say: so what, it is just another way of working with the body, you are doing a lot of floor work, and using improvisation, and rolling, falling, learning about weight vs. gravity, to learn to use your arms and legs, and find the trust to express yourself through dance. But, yes, all this is true, and yet it is not all.  And the reason why I am thinking about this writing so much, is not because I think that this method is amazing or unique (actually I do think so, because I am still deeply interested in it and so are all my colleagues and our participants), but I find the process fascinating.

When this facilitation happens, and the participant feels the deep trust in the moment, and finds the doors that make them allow themselves to move as they really feel like, and the judgements are on hold for some time, and the liberation happens, they connect to their full beauty. This beauty is so humanly simple, so unique and yet so bluntly common. Yes, we are moved by love, by peace, yes we can find a very subjective health in which we can find our flow. We can feel enough, we can feel right, no more no less. we can be present in our pain, in our loss and our darkness.

This is so precious, it is empowering and putting the values into their place within us. We somehow get away from preconceived ideas, and come closer to what is, and find some kind of inner agreement with it. The common experience of this shared beauty of the bodies, minds and skins and emotions in motion fills us, and we realise we do not need so many other things to stimulate us anymore.

New ideas, new movements…

During this workshop we invited the participants to write, not only for some rituals, but additionally if they wanted to comment, ask, share something they could do so by writing on to small papers which I had brought with me from my favourite paper shop in Prague, Papyrus. So writing has become an inherent part of movement work. There is time to move and explore and there is time to write. But since the beginning of the workshops at Vadimanasir, I invite the participants to write me a letter after the workshop, about their experience and what it touched on them. I think I have mentioned this before in my blog. 

And this time I declared that I would like to start an old movement again: writing letters to each other. 

It is incredible to think and really understand how we are unable to write letters to our friends and loved ones, and how we are satisfied by WhatsApp. Come to think of it, we are also incapable of giving our bodies the time to unfold, to blossom and find expression and liberation through dance. How come we do not make that time? It is so delicious to dive into the mysteries of oneself. How come we do not honour our movement, our expression and are so imprisoned by our own judgements of beauty and how things should be.

I think this is what I would like to write about. Not only what Somatic Dialogue is, because its definition is in constant transformation. But actually what this practice can open and what it can touch. 

So this workshop made me think more deeply about all the principles of Somatic  Dialogue, and also about the style, about my words. I have to continue staying simple, and clear and just let it happen, just as I do in movement. 

We can be limitless as long as we fully embody our own body’s borders. It is the endless dance and interaction of our invisible selves with the beautifully visible one, the universe beneath the skin and the landscape of our being.

Dance must B

And so must Love

And therefore why don’t you write a letter to a loved one this week?