Jan-Ming Lee in response to Annie Edward's workshop - October 2022
We begin together sitting in a circle. This is the start of a day workshop with Annie Edwards; a Hip Hop and contemporary dancer and disability activist.
As I type these words a month later, I reflect on how my experience of her workshop has a theme of ‘longing to be sensed in all my multiple layers’. I have read Annie say in an interview that she wished her many layers to be recognised, not only the one superficial layer that is often imposed on her.
‘If you have pain, accept it’s there.’
During the warm up after lunch, I notice how I feel playful to explore my relationship to pain that comes from my Scoliosis; the asymmetrical curves of my spine. As Annie also has Scoliosis and a lived experience of managing a lot of pain from different conditions, I feel a sense of trust from her facilitation and move with this task with curiosity and compassion towards my own landscape of fear.
The task warms up not only my flesh but also my mind - it is like expanding and dancing my mind’s space bigger and bigger, opening and loosening the restrictions that my mind puts on my body. Fear and joy dance together, threaded through with possibilities.
Throughout the day I notice Annie teaches us to continually manage our energy. We guide our own energy levels over a period of moving continuously for 20 minutes. On the other end of the spectrum, she gets us to manage our bodies’ rhythms through pausing several moments in under a second.
As the workshop goes on, we begin working more into stillness, pausing, not moving; in sync with different phrases in the music.
I am noticing how alive my energy is during these pauses. The playfulness of tracing my mind’s pathways through my sinews and nerves, tugging outward into space as I ‘appear’ to be motionless.
We play with how to support others as they dance. We explore sensing what we need from each other to feel supported.
I really appreciate how Annie articulates specific movement instructions. She clearly gives details of the energetic intention, and I can work from this to catch the movement’s aliveness, its character, which vibrates in my sensations before it leaves me and jumps towards others.
The space between us gets more tangible, dense, playful. I enjoy these layers of shared sensing – a space that is mixed with personal and collective decision making. We catch each other’s intentions as we sense ourselves and each other.
Jan-Ming Lee
Photo Algy Behrens - / Longing to be sensed in all my multiple layers’