struggling to talk about dancing today

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today when children and their families are being separated and held, in horrid conditions, on the Southern Border in The United States. 

Give me your tired, your poor,

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today when people are being turned away from that border as the Trump administration's new asylum rule upends long-standing protections for people fleeing violence and oppression in their homelands.

Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today when the President of the United States tweets hateful and racist comments about four of our Congresswomen.

I'm struggling to talk about dancing today as the comparisons being flung about, too easily sometimes, between the rise of Hitler and the rise of Trump, are now landing — on solid footing.

Last night Glen and I watched the documentary about Dr. Ruth, and wept as this tiny little firecracker of a woman, 90 years old, who, when she saw the names of her parents, for the first time at the Holocaust Museum in Israel, instantly rose to her feet to place her hand on the computer screen to touch the letters that spelled out those names:

Father, Murdered.
Mother, Disappeared.

We wept again when she gazed upon the statue of liberty that brought her to our shores. It was the light from her face that got us, the naked gratitude, hand on her heart, reciting the inscription, slowly and with pride:

Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, 
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We wonder, as you wonder, what that inscription means now, and how we will reclaim it.

So I'm struggling to talk about dancing today. 

But then I see AOC speak about those racist tweets, and I quiet a bit.

(I tell Glen, after watching her speak, that I want to marry her, I hope he understands. He does).

I read this quote by Viktor Frankl,

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

This makes sense to me, because it is what I do in my dancing -- find space, and follow what that space offers, even when there is nothing, which is everything.

So I find myself, to my surprise, talking about dancing today.

And that feels important -- to continue talking about dancing, even when it is difficult, because I am aware that if I don't, I have given my power over, my joy over, my delight over, to fear.

And I don't want to do that because I want to stay vibrant and wondering. 

And, because it would be much easier for the current leaders of The United States of America to not only sully that inscription on Lady Liberty, more than they already have, but to knock her down completely if the citizenry of this country were to lie down in despair and stop talking about, engaging with, and learning from, what they love.

So I will not.

Your dance mission:

I played with this last night, on my own, when it is still light outside, and just starting to get dark: 

My elbows and my knees.
Those parts that fold and unfold.
That are knobby.
I found stillnesses that were odd yet comforting, and movements that went underneath the body, if that makes any sense. 

The doodle above looks like elbows and knees to me.

Elbows and knees: follow, find space, and see where those knobby bits take you.

Lastly, this list of chapter titles, which I sent to you right after Trump was elected, from the wee and brilliant book by Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny.

Re-reading this, strangely, gave me hope, and helped to untangle my struggle to talk about dancing today:

Do not obey in advance.

Defend institutions.

Beware the one-party state.

Take responsibility for the face of the world.

Remember professional ethics.

Be wary of paramilitaries.

Be reflective if you must be armed.

Stand out.

Be kind to our language.

Believe in truth.

Investigate.

Make eye contact and small talk.

Practice corporeal politics.

Establish a private life.

Contribute to good causes.

Learn from peers in other countries.

Listen for dangerous words.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

Be a patriot.

Be as courageous as you can.

~

Dance, draw, paint, write, sing.

It's important, I think, that in the midst of calling, marching, educating ourselves and keeping a sharp eye on history, that we also continue to engage with, as much as we can, art and creativity, in whatever shape that takes for you.

With Warmth,
Joanna
of
Joanna and The Agitator
sweetly agitating/persistently upending
www.joannaandtheagitators.com