it”. 4 What emerges from these cycles are complex organ- isms, systems, movements, and societies, brown teaches, and like birds, they respond to destiny together. The destiny line stands out. It perks heads off desks and up out of sweatshirts, it invites the wise words of the female detention officer, until then silent behind her mask, who describes a kind of predestined force bigger than what we know. Once in the sunny courtyard, we set the destiny line to a melody that etches into a groove the more we repeat it together, a kind of iterative development that tries on different pitches until it finds its tonal agreement. Snaps, head bobs, and shoulder sways keep time, and other lines layer in, inspired by the text. “Nothing is wasted, never a failure.” Then: “From worm to butterfly”. And last: “There’s a purpose to it always, always, always”, each “always” creeping up to the highest notes the group of us can hit. This gets a laugh each time and the song sort of explodes by the end in loud sounds and smiles. There’s something contagious about making fun of the seriousness while reaching underneath to make sure the meaning counts. We perform the song for Coach Hall, detention center lead educator, and the rest of the group who have been our seated witnesses in the chairs away from our small circle. Applause and a sense of accomplishment has us search for a name for the song. “Beautiful Journey” gets a few likes, but it’s K whose idea gets the vote. “Nah” she says, “I like Beautiful Future” she waits a beat as others turn toward her, “Beautiful Future is better because the journey can get super bumpy….like these rocks in my shoes after sitting out here.” K is the most vocal in group discussion that day. It’s her input that guides the move toward songwriting, since she liked to sing but hadn’t done it in a while. Her memory of chorus resonated with the “cohesive,” “shared direc- tion” of emergence brown described, the recollection of which spurred others to bring in comparisons to basket- ball and dance team. Inviting in movement, we try to flock together, a dance improvisation us co-facilitators introduce which raises eyebrows and seems to cement some deeper into desks. Eyes move around the circle of chairs like, is this for real. Some egg on others, come on, get up. We find this together and in different ways. I ground in and take
by HANNAH SCHWADRON & IVANNA PENGELLEY
WE HEAD OUTSIDE in single file for the second half of class to be in the sun. One student flattens herself on the asphalt, chest down, hands folded under her head. Another slips socked feet out of laceless shoes, warming her toes on the hot court floor. A third moves against the concrete wall and into the shade, her back against the cool- ness with knees pulled up, and a group of us five stand and then sit as we draft the lyrics to our emerging song.
“Destiny is a calling that makes a beautiful journey.” 1 It’s the line from the text we’ve been discussing all after- noon; a passage from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy on the art of flocking and the migratory patterns of birds, which then opens up to other profundities like the underground reaching of oak trees, who “grow such that their roots are intertwined and create a system of strength that is as resilient on a sunny day that it is in a hurricane.” 2 And dandelions who “don’t know whether they are a weed or a brilliance”. 3 And cells, who “grow until they split and complexify” and in doing so, “interact and intersect and discover their purpose… and they serve
1 adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (AK Press), 12. Full text available here: https://ia803401.us.archive.org/20/items/brown-emergent-strategyfullbook/brown%20Emergent%2BStrategy%2Bfull%2Bbook. pdf. For readers who want to follow along with us, we cite pages from this copy of the book.
2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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