Just under 60 hours 'til we gather in Olympia and Joanne Winstanley drops the flag at The Gathering - the xth annual sun dance in Cascadia, a weekend that flashes by in a breathtaking rush of glittering moment-by-moment glee & fun & surprise ... and anchored by a full-moon Saturday night at the point of power that Amara and Sara Pagano call home - an oceanfront acreage with forest and meadow, rocky bluff and pebble beach ... sacred nature.
Advance thanks to those making it happen: Liz Jaeger (always the centrepoint around which all circles), Kari Uhlmann (housing coordinator), Jack Turner (heading up the tireless local crew who toil on our behalf), Cynthia Kennedy (described in Liz's email to us all as 'party organizer extraordinaire') and the teachers showering us with their gifts - Peter Fodera, Lori Smullin, the Victoria tribe's own and aforementioned Joanne W, and our wise, gracious, inspiring hosts - Paganos Sara & Amara.
A randomly-opened quote from Isadora Duncan is the wind behind which i set sail tomorrow ... and so to all attending the Gathering, let us be as little children & exalt in movement:
"When asked for the pedagogic program of my school, I reply: 'Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child.' Nietzsche has said that he cannot believe in a god that cannot dance. He has also said, 'Let that day be considered lost on which we have not danced.'
But he did not mean the execution of pirouettes. He meant the exaltation of life in movement."
Isadora Duncan: The Art of the Dance (Theatre Art Books, 1928)
