Flow
I just returned from the ECMMA Northeast Regional Convention, and I am feeling peaceful and happy. I usually return from these conferences packed with information and conversation, but feeling exhausted and overstimulated. What was the difference?
There were some practical differences – a smaller group than you find at the National Convention, an easy car ride home . . . but I think the main difference was in the content. Just about every presentation was really about Flow.
Like a musical composition, or a really good novel, the character of “flow” was experienced, but not defined, until the very last session. At 4:30 on Sunday, when I would normally have expected to be pie-eyed, I was fascinated by Denise Guilbault’s workshop on Laban’s most basic elements of movement – beginning with flow. Flow is just what you’d expect – or maybe a little more active. We gyrated our hips, shoulders, knees, moving our bodies in all sorts of dimensions that we mostly don’t in the normal course of a day! We experimented with two types of flow – the extroverted “flow-free” which took our bodies out and around, and the introverted “flow-bound” which took us inside ourselves.
These movements reminded me to the very beginning of the conference, when keynote Cynthia Taggart had us all sitting in a circle on the floor or on chairs, singing and flowing in that extroverted free-form way. This sense of flow extended throughout the conference. Set up by Cynthia, we flowed through Angela Barker’s living anthology of traditional songs and finger games. In my presentation on infant reflexes, we flowed from the “stuck” place of the Fear Paralysis Reflex into a series of organic and integrative reflex movements. And that evening, Jennie Mulqueen did a one-woman show that seamlessly flowed through costume changes, stories, and songs – with, what I could swear, was the actual voice of Julie Andrews!
If I had one take-away from the weekend, it would be that “beat” exists inside of “flow.” In a beautiful melody, we are not conscious of beat – we listen to the rise and fall, the inflection, the dynamic and timbre of the voice, the emotional suggestion of the mode . . . but you can be sure that the beat is there, holding the whole form together. Otherwise, we would not hear a melody at all – we would hear a random series of unconnected sounds. Even in the most melismatic music, there is a common denominator of pulse – it may be very a very fast vibration, but it is there, organizing the melodic form.
Beat is not music. Beat is simply measurement of time. A clock or a metronome is beat. But as soon as that beat is inflected – even by the gesture of a hand clap – we begin to get into flow. And the more flow there is, the more that flow relies upon the invisible stability of the beat – just as an acrobat relies upon the invisible law of gravity, in the very act of seeming to defy it.
On Sunday, the conference moved through many more kinds of flow. We experimented with the flow of silence, as Jennie Mulqueen explored the idea of “emerging” a curriculum from quiet play. We were astonished by the extended flow of Ginny Latts’ http://conferences.ecmma.org/northeast/northeast-schedule/ne-presenters/ Dalcroze class, in which a tiny little story about listening to a pond in Maine turned into an entire curriculum that included every aspect of music and movement, from timbre to counterpoint to notation to improvisation to ensemble to . . .
I came away from this conference feeling energized because the experience of flow is inherently energizing. Our daily life gets out of control when we lose our sense of flow. Everything feels disregulated and random, there is too much coming in, and nothing organizes it. But feeling the beat and moving with the flow, we can negotiate our lives like a canoe through the rapids – like a hawk riding a strong wind – like an expert teacher in the midst of a bunch of wiggly little bodies.
Many thanks to coordinator Jane Revkin for creating the flow of this amazing weekend.
Flow is fun. I’m getting into it.
barbara and alexander polikoff Jul 25, 2011
The blog was delightful to read, and we’re flowing into the day.