Waking into Mother’s Arms

African dance is quite possibly the evolution of yoga. Or perhaps I mean to say it’s what I would be doing if I were already totally liberated.

Well, that depends on the definition of liberation of course, so let me try to be concise.

When I am deep in the dance and the music has become a river that carries my prayer. When the mind is not willing the body to move but the movement of the body is stilling the mind to the groove. When the drums are my heart and the rhythms my fiery blood-line linkage to the ancestors who have chanted the dreams of the people perpetually. When separation is smashed by the crack of the stick on the skin of the drum on the hips of each one in this most sacred of spaces called Pure Joy…

Something like that.

Is it ironic that the continent which has suffered like no other also produces the clearest cultural expressions of embodied joy, a flow so pure that cynicism has nothing to cling to?

Mama Africa! My tears again for you! Mama Africa! My laughter an echo of your eternal sunshine swaying song. Mama Africa! Come again to teach the teachers at BaliSpirit Festival, where the un-written wisdom of the dance is heard with respect and awe. Mama Africa! Who makes asana dynamic and expressive and funky and FREE!!!!

Mama Africa, Mama India, so glad you’ve found home here in the temple of the heart of Bali.

Written by : Administrator