Tribal Remix day 3: Sera Solstice’s Good Morning Flow – review
with Sera Solstice after a workshop
Welcome your day of dance with a body-focused flow of movement. Designed to relax, open, and strengthen and remind the dancer of her original love of dance.
We will work into dance-technique in a round-about way, focused first on feeling, relaxing into our movement, and then gently honing in on technical execution.
We will work through smooth expansive sequences, slow and fast isolations, and upbeat hipwork drills and layers.
Finally, we will string together a grouping of movements into a choreographic sequence.
Sera initially worked us through a gradual warm-up, not as cardio or yoga intensive as most other dancers do, but quite flowy and relaxing. After that, we had a bit of a moving meditation… Anybody that has seen her DVDs know there’s a meditation thrown in between the warm-up and the technique, and while some might dismiss it as “woo” or “twee”, I rather like the focus. She worked that angle not from some esoteric energy or universe to visualise or connect to, but from very tangible, very obvious items for us as dancers: the ground we were standing on, the building we were in, the air we were breathing, the people surrounding us. It was rather interesting, in that it helped me connect a bit better with the environment instead of just plopping myself into it, and I could see a use for it as a centering technique before performances. After that, she started giving us a basic move, which could be a simple footwork or arms, and left us to work on it, eyes closed, trying to learn to feel the flow of the move to see what worked better for us, what our bodies enjoyed the most, what felt more comfortable. I found this exercise very intriguing, I know a few people were trying to build combos or the like. For me, it was a license to just let my body go and notice what movements flowed naturally, and while I was at it, think about why. I have to say, this was rather a revelation for me, I had not ever stopped to think about these things, and what I figured out during that time was rather interesting and led me to start thinking more in depth about why I am dancing, what I expect from it, and what I hope to achieve. We must have worked through five or six steps or sequences with this method; I get the feeling that it should be a great way of exploring basic moves to combine or enhance them.
We then moved onto combos. I am very sad to say that I *sucked* at them, my brain had already gone into a totally different tangent and was busy doing its own thing so I kept using the wrong arms or putting the weight in a different spot. I honestly can’t remember a single one of them (shame on me); they were all very slinky and flowy, but I do remember that after a while I *did* feel I was starting to “get” this particular flow, which has been difficult for me in the past. By now I was pretty much in a haze; you can see by the photo above that I look completely soaked and tired, but look like I’ve just had the best birthday present *ever*.
I found this workshop with Sera super-inspirational, giving me food for thought even though my body was frazzled after three days of intense work and my brain was fried with all the info I’d been absorbing. And the following day, when I walked onto the stage at the Ifield Barn Theatre, I know that I did it with a new found confidence and self-assurance that I’d never felt before, and that I picked in no small part during the workshops.
Would I take another workshop with Sera? Definitely. I found her very much in tune with what her students needed, attentive and clear.
Bring on Tribal Remix 2015!