This week I was at the Mexican Day of the Dead Festival in Berlin. With two other somatic practitioners, Mónica Toimil Robert and Frauke Felsch, and two Papiermaché skeletons, we did a movement session for schoolchildren.
One of the characteristics of the dead is that what remains of them, visibly and palpably, are the bones. So it was Mónica‘s idea to do something around bones, to create a „skeleton dance“.
I started off with „knocking on the bones“, sensing the structure of the individual bones from the skull to the feet and back up again. Monica then invited the children to move the individual bones, developing into a dance, where in effect, the bones danced with each other.
With Frauke we felt the weight of our bones, first by letting the limbs get heavier and then working with a partner, one letting the weight of an arm go, while the other held it. Mónica continued with movements focussing on the sensation of weight. This developed into a dance she called „a dialogue with gravity“.
Our playful sequence created the ideal combination of flexibility and grounding – from the outside in, sensing structure and from the inside out, sensing weight – for the breath to flow freely in the body.