私は自分の生きていること全体をダンスと呼びたくなってきていて、「私はひとつのダンスです」と言えたらいいなと思うんです。
I am beginning to feel like calling “dance” the entire reality of my living. It would be great if I can announce “I am a dance.”

-Min Tanaka

On our recent retreat in Ireland, I saw that it is very valuable to be together. To hang out in the same location can be very helpful. But, surprisingly, I don’t think it is better than how we practice together online. The two, being physically together and practicing together online, are different but both amazing. I think is is so miraculous that we can connect with people all over the world in a video practice call, all deeply involved in our own practice. One could be in Brazil, one in Latvia, one in Dublin… And we can feel each other and feel connected to the lush environment and summer sun in Brazil while it is snowing here in the Pacific Northwest and we are in our Winter hibernation. All limited ideas of time and space can disappear in this connection. It is very powerful to connect, and we can all meet each other and still go on with our lives. 

I’d like to begin the transition to the month-long intensive being thought of as one long continuous freestyle connection.  Like one long period of meditation, and that period has room for creatively exploring how to keep our process going as we go about our day for that whole month.  Not the idea that there are good times when we are doing real practice, and then less good or wasted times when we are doing mundane tasks like cooking or cleaning or watching a movie, but one long period of exploration with structured classes thrown in.  How can our practice encompass all that we are doing, all day long… What does it mean to keep it going all of the time?  It can’t just be about stamina or going for it!, that would not be very interesting. But to discover something deeper there all of the time.  To creatively use our time, to meet life as it is happening. Might mean breaking some rules and finding our own way!

I want to encourage freestyle movement, creative walks, spontaneous times of stillness, creative free style sitting, redefining what practice is all of the time. Make it your own, and make it real real real. Making it an exploration of life.  If helpful to remove rusty assumptions, one could even think of it as one big dance piece. So that all of the movements we are doing are a part of this improvisational art piece.  

So in the intensive there will be the Discord rooms for practice, and I really encourage them to be used and soaked up!, but I also want us to have our finger on the practice, keep our intention, our pulse aligned with practice and everyone else practicing for the month when not even in a room or a structured class. That’s my wish, a month of intention, a primordial inquiry, an explorative life dance piece. A time for prayers and exploration, an active inquiry into what is actually happening, and allowing it to awaken each other and the world around us. Let this be a time of merging time and space and opening up, letting go of the ideas of separation as we let go of the stuck places in our own bodies and immediate field. 

This inquiry. This fascination. Not force but inspiration.  Life  Dance. Being alive.

踊りは私の日常です。
Dance is my daily life.   – Min Tanaka

Min Tanaka, Bordeaux-11 1980 ©Keiichi Tahara