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I enjoyed your post so much! I never want you to stop twirling, and with each twirl, questioning these things and refusing to be contained, serious.

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I love the potential joy of these twirls, and I think there's something about the shape of this action that really resonate. What does it mean to spin in circles? I think this tends to be thought of in a bad way, but here there's so much freedom in spinning - it's a moment of freedom and of revisiting a past in a way that isn't inherently negative or even passive. I think it can do any of us good!
-Lili

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Toria, that's wonderful that you twirl and defy your "serious" identity. I also was given that identity when I was younger and was bothered by it because I thought that my family saw me one-dimensionally when I was really multi-dimensional. Keep twirling in private or wherever you feel like twirling and just be you!

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Toria's entanglement of twirls makes me think about this entanglement of women's hands and actions of joy and care.

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They asked me about my cosmic family. Instantly turned to women in Colombia with whom I grew up, who have held me close, with whom I have learned, fought, navigated multiple tensions of multiple textures. These are their hands their spaces, what they enjoy doing...All of their hands and joys, are part of my own body, my joys, my history.

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Inhabiting and revisiting turns, twirls, twists, bends, spins, falls

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Inhabiting and revisiting turns, twirls, twists, bends, spins, falls

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I have rarely heard about my mother’s or abuela’s lives as children. I have been told repeatedly that I was serious as a child. While I could find gestures that better represent these women’s ways of inhabiting the world, I decided to twirl. In twirling I am questioning whether any of us twirled as daughters and little girls. I’m also sharing that I twirl as an adult woman in privacy and wonder whether this seriousness has boiled down and away in each of us and whether they dance or move, in silence, when alone.
-Victoria

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Your offering of the way your grandmother showed you how to make this sign of the cross came back into my mind as I've been playing with the tension textile friend. I especially thought of you when I was listening to the virtual Catholic mass that I go to and you know the parts where you raise your hands all together? I feel like everyone is always looking at each other to remember the right moments to do so and I think it's a sweet bumbling that we do. In the end, I think about how the looking to the others there with you, the care into wanting to do things well is enough (: Enough to remind of how the main message that I get from the stories and sermons about Jesus & the angels & saints & holy mother is that we don't need to be afraid. That undid a few knots of tension for me that I forgot that I was holding that Sunday

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I have been thinking what connects us but also what we want to un-do. And working with fabric has been a way to explore that

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My Study of gestures and working-with tension

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My Study of gestures and working-with tension

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Gestures that keep us together and apart

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Gestures that keep us together and apart

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I have continued to think about this amazing gesture-study that you shared Lili..
I think of this also a tension of sorts... It is a force that pulls and that you feel and with which you have to work. Sometimes to pull in the other direction, sometimes letting you be pulled.
I think of this negotiation as a dance... as Trisha Brown did, or what is my interpretation of this piece below.

I also think of how this hand gesture works as a sort of membrane.... or knot? That keeps you connected and immersed in this family tradition, in this family embodiment... but it is also something that somehow seems to mark a difference or distinction between that tradition and the direction in which you seem to prefer to move... did I understand correctly?

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Leaning Duets (1970) Choreography by Trisha Brown

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Lili! I love so much that you are writing about this!!
This is a sneak-peak of something I sent and that will be my invitation for this next month... and one of the main aspects of this invitation is how do we experience (feel, think and deal ) with tension?

Here is a provocation.... and yes I have been grappling with this question and the reflection that you share for a while now. I can't wait to explore that together.

(These stamps were drawn, developed by my friend and collaborator, Natalia Espinel., as part of our shared research-creation around tension.
I extend this drawing to you as an invitation to think about how to engage with the tension that constitutes our bodies, movements, and histories)

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I've been thinking a lot about something Tacia mentioned about tension and how we hold it in our bodies. We learn our gestures and coping mechanisms from family as often as from other sources, so it's been on my mind lately as I consider the stressors in my life and how I respond to them. I think this is something Cata mentioned too - this idea of her posture relating both to her awareness as a dancer and the reminder of the things her mother taught her. How much of what we are is reactionary? What does that mean for us? I don't have an answer, but I've been thinking about this!

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First, thank you Cata for offering an explanation of this invitation! I immediately thought about hands and what they tell us about ourselves and other people. I offer this video, where I make the sign of the cross as was taught to me by my grandmother. I think of my hands as hers, in that I've been told very often that we have the same nails, specifically; the role of religion I've invoked here is also a result of her influence, as she tried very hard to raise her family as devout Mexican Catholics. Hands are links, I think, and ways of connecting, and for me a reminder.
-Lili

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS WEEK'S EXPLORATION

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS WEEK'S EXPLORATION

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Read through this instructions.... take your time, ENJOY!

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Who are part of us? --String Figuring, Prompt 3

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Who are part of us?  Inhabit gestures of loved ones

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Who are part of us?  Inhabit gestures of loved ones

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What bodies are part of our daily lives? Which gestures/movements keep us connected with loved ones?
(Animation by Mary Kate Ford)