True power?

Photo by Al Simmons

What is true power? It’s a theme that feels very alight at the moment. And certainly a deep river of a question that runs through the FaultLines project - this network of dances by female dancers, anywhere in the world, in the wild, which I initiated this summer. 

It feels necessary to write some words on true power, because the word comes up in the FaultLines project again and again and it can get so easily tangled with other perceptions of power, and mis-interpreted. 

When I say ‘power’, to describe something the women who dance in the FaultLines project both connect to and express. This is not the ‘power’ of domination, the power of domination that flattens everything. And it is not the route to ‘power’ of  highlighting an injustice or a marginalisation and putting it at the feet of domination and asking or demanding to be seen. It is not this kind of power. 

When I say ‘power’ in this context I mean the power that is seen everywhere  - between the stars, in how insects behave with each other, sometimes fighting and cannibalising, in how a flower opens, in the food-chain, at dawn, and also in how we behave with each other. This power could also be articulated as deep trust - there is an extraordinary communication of power when we trust, when we trust these things above, and each other. 

Power can learn to trust by meditating. We can see expressions of power and the deep trust of power when a lover lays his head to rest on his beloved’s chest, an infant on a mother, a friend on a friend - all who lay their head on the other in rest, and those who receive them, show us this trust, this power. 

In this time of Corona, there are certainly troubles and threats and challenges. But also something is being revealed - and that is that we are all connected. And it’s this power connecting us. It’s the ground we must live from.