White, a Butoh-inspired dance by Brenda Clews

A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. I wanted to add a poem, and perhaps that's next. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, profundita natura, the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer.


Hi beautiful friends, Sharing 'White, a Butoh-inspired dance.'.. film clip from late last Summer, and then all last night editing (editing video I'm discovering is like that:-) ...layering... images, sounds, yet not wanting to disturb the vulnerability, perhaps strangeness, of this 'silent film'... Butoh can express the painful and beautiful paradoxes of life in an intimacy that is almost unbearable to watch, I don't know if this film has that, but it's in the intent.

Feedback is always wonderful as I stumble down the path of this art form.

If 'White' opens something out in you, even in resistance, or in a sense of discomfort, then that is the Butoh influence, and then I'll know your reaction is like mine. For I don't know who that woman is, something else takes hold, another energy flows through.

Many thanks for taking the time to look at this. Many thanks for the blessing you are in my life,

hugs, Brenda xo


direct link to the video at YouTube: White, a Butoh-inspired dance.

Erica's 'Dance Our Way Home'

The theme was Amaterasu, Japanese goddess of the sun, a retreat to and emergence from our caves. In the slivers of mirrors we saw ourselves and we enjoyed our shining. We mirrored each others' beauty. Did we become luminous beings by the end of the day of the dance of the shining?

Our sun-wings spread like sun beams caressing the air and we flew as angels of light, I am sure of it.

Everyone's skin was fragile, luminous. Didn't matter what age we were, or size, or what life has carved on us.

Did our eyes shine delicately lit radiating out to illumine the world?

I saw the women's eyes shining; I saw them enlightening the world with their woman-wisdom, their wily smiles, their open-flowered red hearts. I saw their curvaceous dances, their plunging depths, the way they flung themselves into ecstatic states from which they would never emerge, never, if life was composed of the harmonious flowing energies of the dancefloor.

The unwinding from the tight to the relaxed was like approaching an apex and once you reach it you fly. With your feet, your hands, your twirling torso, your wildly swinging hips.

We flaunt it. Our tulle and taffeta and silk and microfibre; pinks and greens and purples and blacks; yogic symbols and alpine wild flowers. Hot breath; luminous, damp and streaming.

In the dance we are embedded in the broad sweeping swaths of sun as she revolves around the planet illumining the world as she goes, spreading rays of wisdom like falling petals of light from the crown of the thousand-petaled lotus that she wears.

We are. In our quiet ways. Or exhibitionist. Or wildly celebrating. Deep. Rich in our sorrow. Visions. Glimmering. Sparkling. Bedazzled. Radiant. Luscious.

Dancing at Erica's Dance Our Way Home (DOWH) is very sweet.




Many thanks...





Beautiful Erica Ross leading a prayer for peace at a DOWH session.


A video created during a short post-DOWH dance at Summer Solstice where my voiceover was this poem:

Oz's Photo

Oz's photo of me yesterday. Oswald Phills is a powerful djembe drummer who I know from Tam Tam along with his beautiful partner, Eve. He used to send out a great newsletter, Drumcultures, on the drumming scene in Toronto as well as life around Kensington Market, where they live, and I think he might resurrect that project in the future as a website. I knew he also was a painter but did not know about his film-making abilities, which I've been discovering on Facebook. Yesterday, at Sublime Cafe in Kensington, Oz filmed a short film he wrote with Ordo and I acting in it. I love the script, Oz's filmic consciousness is very much the 'art film.' He's a brilliant guy, all in all.

Starfire in the Night

A little painting, still wet, that I quickly painted
to accompany the poem...
(posted with the 'accented edges' photoshop filter)

sliding around the world
through many crowds
Mumbai, New York, Rio
like an image from a billboard
flat like film
a projection of light
these burning neurons
their shadow prism shifts

no separation

a market in Madrid
harsh sleet of Himalaya
blade of grass in the prairies

I could be dying

or in a spacesuit on the moon

no separation between me
and the world,
which is my dreaming paradise

nothing was lost

release the inner hold
there is no tight control
write by cell-light

dark hours of running
on this side of living
in the bright world
of the lion's mouth

flying into outer space

where the universe
contains such combustion

stars burn for billions of years
keeping galaxies alive

I searched for you
and found you
everywhere

if you could set all your dissolves
to a fifth of a second
the mathematical regularity
would be bliss

Was a stomach bug, I assume. Not "the stomach flu" (because not accompanied by the usual 'either-or-both-ends' accompaniments) but something that sets into your belly and aches worse than childbirth. I was only 5 hours in labour with my first baby, and a 3 scant hours with my second. This was worse. The gut ache was unrelenting and grumbled in sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning (sort of 2am-ish), peaked on Saturday accompanied by a mild fever, which dropped by Sunday though the gut felt like oozing palpitating ingots of rusted iron. I groaned through the Academy Awards, dang (how often have I watched enough of the nominated movies to make watching the show worth-while?) Today it's mostly gone, and good riddance to ya! Class tonight was thankfully fine - though I didn't eat all day 'just in case,' and munched on some peanuts and a cereal bar in class because I was starving. I don't wish it on anyone!

Running a mild fever, an excruciatingly sore spot in my belly - on my left, lower down, not sure what it could be. Probably they're unrelated: one the flu; the other too much of a work-out last Tuesday doing an abdominals yoga set with my son and then walking a brisk 10km two days later. So Advil and drag myself out to walk the dog in the blizzardy evening, and then rest with a heating pad and perhaps Seven Years in Tibet tonight.

A gadget-type

Speed test of my Internet provider, Bell. I think it looks good, but I'm not a techie! The site says it's faster than 81% of connections. Now what this means I'm not sure...

I admit I'm a freeware/open source gadget-type (who leaves thank-you notes for the developers). Recently downloaded Camouflage, a terrific little utility that 'hides' the icons on your desktop for instant de-clutter! And I just found a great little application, a Timer Utility for the Mac. Then I opened Audacity (another free program - I've not yet gotten the hang of how to do these little things in Apple's Garage Band, not like Apple's old Sound Studio, which was easy to use), grabbed some Tibetan Bells music, cut a small clip out, fiddled with it a bit (increased volume, a few mini cuts), saved it as an .mp3, and viola! I have the perfect "alarm" of delicately ringing Tibetan Bells for when I'm finished a yoga mediation! It's so beautiful!