Have You Ever Had A Beautiful Conversation?

Below are two perspectives on a simple conversation three people held on a grassy-knoll (I always wanted to use grassy-knoll in a sentence.)

Arthur’s perspective: I recently met Melodie Moore (a phenomenal hoola-hooping superstar, representing the Toronto-scene) in person, and she has quite an impressive understanding of dance in general.

Melodie gets performance. She understands performance. She lives and breathes performance.

To listen to her talk about being on stage for others, or body movement or decoration or fashion or anything to bring value to people who’re watching or giving their support and attention is riveting. She understands how with a crowd of people standing around still, and maybe bored, her energy and attitude and the love she brings to the performance can drastically change everything. She understands the value of dance, and because of this understanding, she was able to teach me how to massively improve my own dance.

Even if Melodie and I have different styles or specialties in our dance, (she focuses on hoola and me on breakdance), it doesn’t matter, because she teaches creative and inspirational core principles that apply to any performance, and really, they’re the foundation for any performance while being at same time, the advanced subtleties of it. Beginner and expert alike, can definitely benefit from paying attention to what seems to come naturally to Melodie.

She was telling me how she’s experimented with things like dancing with certain thoughts in her head: dancing with happy thoughts, dancing with sad thoughts, or dancing with no thought at all, and she pointed out how she could make so many hooping ‘mistakes,’ while performing in front of others, but the end result would still be them adoring and praising her because of the thoughts she held, and the love and heart in each movement. She also explained how to maintain an overall goal for the performance but paradoxically release it and simply enjoy every single motion and moment of the event.

These are things that may not be commonly taught in a lot of dance studios. I’m fortunate to learn from truly passionate teachers and I really love dancing at Vybe (Vybe is an awesome dance location in Markham) – the teachers at Vybe are awesome, and while they teach differently than Melodie, they also explain these concepts in their own way. They basically lead by example. When I’m watching Pryo (Pryo is a teacher at Vybe who focuses on popping and breakdancing), I can’t deny that he’s putting his heart and soul into each movement. I can’t deny that he’s inspired and truly giving his best, to teach us. And it makes a difference! He’s basically living by the principles Melodie explained to me. Some studios and magazines touch on these, but usually not as directly and clearly as in the conversation I had yesterday.

I personally feel that the concepts Melodie was talking about, enliven and awaken the true dancer in all of us and I can’t wait to spread this through the Toronto dance scene.

So to wrap up, this tale might seem simply like a personal story about dance and teachers and inspiration – and it is! But it’s more than that as well, because each interaction in life is like the movement of a dance, and there’s a natural dancer in all of us, and to give some time and attention to the presence and energy of entertainment and performance is at the heart of our culture, and our humanity.

So move your baaawwww–teeeee!

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Jason perspective: I don’t dance. At least, not often, and when I do, there’s usually only a few people around to witness the performance. Each of us have so many moments available to us in life and we have so many activities available to us in life, and there’s no way we can engage in every single option in one physical lifetime.

This doesn’t mean, that I don’t dance ever, or that I don’t love dance, or that I’m not good at dancing, or that I don’t like to watch dance (I definitely love to watch dance ). I do however attract many dancers in my life. Sometimes it seems like everyone I know loves to dance, and I like it that way. There’s an interesting trend though, and that is, that as my friends dance and grow in their dance, I see them using all the tools of creativity and inspiration that I’ve applauded since I was little.

Recently, I was privileged to witness a conversation between two dancers very close to me (Arthur, SpiritSentient partner extraordinaire, and Melodie, Self-proclaimed Spiritsentient Super-Stalker), and it was really enlightening. They talked about things that I’m used to. They talked of creativity, inspiration, purpose, and things ‘artists’ talk about.

They talked about providing value to the audience. They talked about changing people’s moods and uplifting feelings. They talked about dancing for themselves at the same time as dancing for others. They talked about the power of thoughts and how they influence and inspire different kinds of dance, these are all things that I talk on and on about through SpiritSentient, books, artwork, day-to-day conversations, and so on. I don’t frame my ideas for dancers specifically very often, and it was refreshing to hear.

I think my favorite part of their whole discussion was when they talked about how everything is dance and everything is an art and even the conversation they were having was like a kind of dance.

Here it becomes a bit difficult to explain with words, so all I can say is that they connected, they were really into it, and they were inspired.

Inspiration, the great intangible force the assists so much…

is how I love to feel with every single thing I do. Whatever I create, whatever words I say, whatever thoughts I think, I love for them to be inspired. This is something that is a bit beyond the step-by-step, 1-2-3 that most people are looking for as they surf the web, but it’s no less valuable.

If more people in the world were able to consciously, intend and maintain their actions as inspired, like a dance or an art, and for their conversations to be inspired, could you imagine the beauty we would create?

Anyway, earlier I said I don’t dance, but it was kind of a lie, because really, I’m dancing all the f***ing time.

Rock on.