Dance Is A Miracle That Happens When We Are There

by Isabel Croxatto

I believe that artists are catalysts of their communities and social, political and cultural environments.

As a choreographer I feel as an antenna, capturing and sending signals. I can´t help seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling and tasting "movement" of all kinds, (visible and invisible), in my own personal life, in a crowded metro station, in a poem or music, in the streets, in a political speech, in nature, history...everywhere!..movement talks to me, and sometimes it just gets into my organic, spiritual and mind system until I do something about it...and that something is a dance.

I ask my self many times, do I know how to dance ? do I really know how to do this ?...after 25 years of trying, I realize that I will never know…and that probably it is not important that I do.

The truth is that when something “calls” me and “moves” my heart, I have to start to work: create, research, explore, learn, develop, practice,... what ever it is need, no matter how long it takes, till I find my way to put it out in a movement that I can transmit back to the world.

And in that process I start to involve others and others start to get involved with that call as if they were hearing it too: dancers, artists, composers, musicians, family, friends, etc. And when I realize that the original movement that had urgently touched me so deeply is already out and expressing itself through a poetic language of movement that we have come to or invented and that has inspired it´s own propitious environment (costume, music, setting, lighting, etc ) - for that to become a visible movement in a time and space that we can share and experience with others, I realize that we are a part and witnesses of a little miracle…that is called, ART.

Sometimes I would also like to know and understand what is moving us to go on dancing and creating dance when nobody seems to care any more… and many times, concerning the apparently insolvent relation between the artist´s work and the audience, I also, ask myself "was that supposed to mean something?"... but that is only my head, reading too close to really see!

And many times, I say to myself,...go home, drop it, their is nothing you can do about it...but then a unexpected angel with many names, crosses my way and brings me back to trust, belief, hope, passion, purpose, love…and back to DANCE and ABUNDANZA!

And here I am in Washington DC, dancing with Butterflies and Trees ... extending our roots and branches to fly directly to your heart, so you can join us in a "revolutionary" movement towards a better future for the generations coming and the amazing planet in which we live.

Do we need to intellectually understand a movement that is happening in a space and time that we are part of as and audience ?... I believe that dance only declares it self when we are all there, but once it starts to unfold we can not stop it and the fact that it is happening is already meaningful beyond our understanding. Dance is a MIRACLE that refreshes and nourishes life, and we together (audience + artist) are part of it. We can open ourselves more and let her come in, touch us and move us ... and why not dance with her. We might at the end come to a different understanding or conclusion, (is that bad?), or maybe we will not like it at all. But coming to experience what artists have to say with no words is a significant ritual to cultivate and exercise, in these days where social pollution is threatening bonds to extinction. I believe that only for that matter it might be worth the risk of intellectual understanding. Do you?

Isabel Croxatto

Coreógrafa y Directora

ABUNDANZA

Santiago, Chile