NEXT Reflections is a series of creative pieces from participants of NEXT Choreography, offering a personal insight into the course.
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Dancing between our edges
This piece is a visual contemplation of what it means to meet yourself by feeling the gravity of others. During my time at NEXT I have been confronted with a profound shift, something I can only describe as finally beginning to understand the gift of embodied and total expression through movement. The act of honouring our multiplicity by allowing our bodies to be complete in their imperfections. The meeting of a wider self by observing the freedom of others in their element of dance. The awareness of the passionate aliveness of the fullness of my being.
Here were my poetic reflections:
I’ve been teetering on the edge of self expression, self discipline, physical devotion for years.
My body, my temple, a place I dwell, a place I could never flow from until flow found itself through a calm observance of fleurs/ flowers around me.
Each class an opening, each lesson an entrance towards a deeper articulation of self. As I sat in the Roof Studio, an eye upon spirits moving I wrote:
“I realised I was an echo
Dancing on the edge of everyone beside me
I meet you at your edge
Inspired
Drowned, intertwined, renewed
Breath of life,
In toe,
entangled,
A memory embodied
We stayed with each other
Two seeds turned flowers
Disparate, diverging,
Find me at your edge
I’ve been bleeding on the precipice of leaders
I’ve been breathing on the tips of her toes
I was bolder than before
Bruises turned blue from wooden floors
I left parts of my spirit within them like a horcrux
For so long, I was projecting, purposeful yet neglecting how…each moment is matter
Tear ducts collateral drama in the theatre of my spirit
Tear ducts collateral drama in the theatre of my body
Much freer than before
We were grieving our old selves on wooden floors
And I met you at your edge
And as your hand moved, mine moved too.
The teachers told us of their struggles and we listened and we learned and we breathed breath into our toes and our chest and we moved with our necks and I cried and she cried and we breathed life into our bodies and we became new flowers, the bruises blue from the wooden floors
I…
Am much bolder than before”
About A’isha
A’isha Odera is an artist, performer and curator who transmits through the pathway of Afro-Spiritual futurism. Her practice endeavours to harness art as a medium of revolution. By engaging the hapticity of the visual, sonic and theatrical to evoke spiritual, physical and mental emancipation in the digital age, Odera navigate’s the waters of knowledge dissemination through experience, challenging the Western notion of materiality of the document, taking privilege over the materiality of the body.
Find A’isha on Instagram @aishaodera.