Minou Tsambika and Eva Gantar: A beginning photo series exploration in moë Vienna
I have for a while felt a need to move, to dance, to flow. It’s a need that whilst living in Essex and working in a busy, fast paced environment I was able to meet this. I took an aerial class and this satiated the need slightly but it still wasn’t quite the correct art form to feel connected to my inner voice and the desire to dance.
Now I am living and working in a slower paced environment and have had the time to process, explore, listen to and acknowledge my needs, wants and desires I have felt the urge to connect to my inner voice through movement more strongly. I have deliberated in the almost six months of living in Devon, about joining a yoga class but this hasn’t resonated with me and I’m yet to do it. I have wondered whether this was because the type of flow practiced in yoga feels to guided and fixed at the moment when I am trying to invite creativity and improvisation back in to my life.
Whilst pondering this, a friend posted a class on her social media page…a contemporary dance class.
When I was 16 I studied physical theatre and turned down a university place at Dartington and to this day I’m not entirely sure why- perhaps wrong time or wrong place? Is it a sheer coincidence that I now find myself working and living in Dartington almost 20 years later, going through a huge growth and change in my life? I like to think it’s the universe guiding me through opportunities I missed or places I was meant to be. But it wasn’t the realisation that maybe I was always meant to explore dance and movement in Dartington that drew me into the possibility of studying dance but rather these two quotes in Minou’s, the dance teachers, advertisement.
I think that many of us want to study dance, without the ambition of becoming professional dancers but to come closer to what it feels like to become more fully human. When we dance we are reminded of our feet, our spines, our reach. I think it’s good for us. ~ Steve Paxton
We do not have bodies, we are bodies. From it I arise. This realisation is both completely mundane and quite extraordinary. ~ Guy Claxton
Something about no pressure to become a professional but rather just feel the different parts of the body, to attune and notice them struck a chord, this is what I’ve been trying to practice in my emotions everyday so it made perfect sense to do this with my body too. To become more creative and to be inspired through the exploration of my own physical form excited me…
On the day of the class I made a million excuses about why I couldn’t go – which in itself was an interesting observation because although wanting to be more fully human and explore the self through a creative medium that isnt’ making art in a traditional sense, I still put barriers to stop me from doing it. I have later thought that there is something that makes you quite vulnerable by just being in a space with yourself trying to attune to the voice within.
But with some gentle persuasion I went and ….I moved…I created soft forms… I allowed a curiosity to develop… It felt wonderful.
The exploration of self through connecting with your own body speaks volumes to me and feels exactly what I should be doing at the moment. It feels as though this is the correct journey to nuturing my creativity and learning to practice an art form again. Whatever that will look like.
I have been living in the wonderful county of Devon for six months, I have given up teaching, found a love of the arts again and a fondness to drizzly walks that end in cake! I’m starting to feel inspired again to create…there is a real sense of landing in the right place… as a visual artist I always felt that my work should reflect my passion and I’m sorry to say for the last six years there has been no real passion… was I still a visual artist when I wasn’t creating? Perhaps I was dormant whilst I worked on gaining other skills?
rachelannphillips 
