Axis Mundi or about my fist supervision

 

Art, and especially dancing is by excellence a paradox: you can access the vast infinity of this art spell (which is always personal) and go beyond the individualism ego, only through totally abandoning yourself, ‘trying to become everything in another person’. (Cioran, A. 2016, p.107)  

Emil Cioran was convinced that the only Art who creates a totally new world is the Music since it is the only capable of bringing a whole new world. The rest of the Arts discover new visions, configurations or new forms. ‘In front of any painting in the world you would not feel that the world could start with you, but there had been finals of symphonies that have forced you many times to ask yourself whether you are the beginning and the end’. (Cioran, A. 2016, p.22)  

For me, dancing is the art that brings me a whole new world. Paraphrasing Cioran’s idea related to music,  the art of dance ‘awakens within us the regret of not being what we should be, and, for a moment, its magic delights us, transposing us in the world we should have lived in.’ Social Argentine Tango is about getting out of yourself, trying to accomplish your ideal world, throughout the essence of couple dancing: musicality, improvisation, connection, partnership, harmony, cohesion, embrace, walking together, responsibility, commitment.

Going out of myself as a dancer, performer and teacher, was a must while calibrating my whole being (mind, heart, soul, body, intuition and improvisation) for a couple’s ‘embodied’ dance experience.

But now, on a special day of September 17th, my MAPP supervisor Helen Kindred is standing in front of me (my first 1-to-1 skype session) telling me that this master is all about me (how I relate to it, how I position myself to its dance pedagogy contents, how I commit to both the programme learning outcomes, and my master personal and professional aims). I had a very strange feeling that the most important person in the [virtual] room and the world was… me! I felt I was the ‘Axis Mundi’, that all the universe started with me. And I really had a curious sensation, like in the tango couple (nevertheless so differently!): the paradox of being absolutely free, whilst feeling all the weight of this flight heaviness and groundedness (in many religions and cultures, axis mundi connects the Heaven with the Earth, the sacred with the prophan).

It was a happy moment, a release instant. I was progressively and unconsciously entering my inner rhythm, the most real and concrete illusion of all. The inner rhythm, cuantic, both conscious and unconscious, silent and sound-breaking, subtle and so powerful. With that inner rhythm, you get the flow, you connect to the Source, with the Art; you can bend reality.  

I have lost that epiphany instant, but I am happy that I had it. Flash moments like that are calibrating me: who I am and who I wanted to be are blended with the kind guidance, confidence and the smile of a mentor (objectively and nostalgically looking at your journey at an operational distance).

Argentineans say ‘No hay causalidad, solo causalidad’ (‘There is no coincidence, only reason’). I am very happy that Helen Kindred is my supervisor because what I need during this MAPP DTP journey is also to re-learn the kindness for me, in a positive constructive self-centred paradigm.

Thank you all, mentors, supervisors, tutors, academic staff, for your guidance!

*

(small) Bibliography (for a small idea):

Cioran, A. 2016. Cioran si muzica [Cioran and the music] (ed.), Bucharest: Humanitas

Kindred, H. 2020. Finding your rythm....Helen’s MAPP Blog [online]. 19 Sept, 20.  Available from: http://helenkindred.blogspot.com/2020/09/finding-your-rhythm.html [accessed 23 September 2020].


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