A nice, gentle Gaga class. I haven’t had one of these in a while, and it’s just what I needed. A lot of things stuck out in class to me today. My mind wasn’t fully present the entire time, but I feel like I still connected with the class. I find myself continuing to shed the pressure of finding a certain aesthetic and opening up to my own movement research.
One thing I usually feel in Gaga, more so for in-person classes than with online, is a small worry about feeling the sensation “correctly.” The pressure isn't there as much with online classes, I think because I don’t feel the teacher’s eyes observing me directly. But even though I don’t feel this pressure as much, I still do wonder if I'm feeling things correctly. I wonder if other people feel things how I do, and if I feel things how the teacher does. He said something today that both surprised me and reassured me.
I’ve never felt so validated in a Gaga class before. The nagging was eased in my mind, like I got permission to dig into the research however I need to. I feel less apprehensive.
We play with some yawning sensations, with the grabbing and elasticity of our flesh, but all in a delicate way. Negating gravity, feeling it slice us, moving from our heart (where the threads connect), being delicate.
“Find your fantasy of having really thin skin. So thin that someone could just poke you and it’d break. Let that delicacy color you from the inside.”
My skin now feels very vulnerable and fragile. It holds in all of my flesh, blood, and bones, threatening to break at any moment. “Feel your thin skin on the sides of your neck. The insides of your thighs. Your lower back. Like your skin is oversized and sagging.” My lower back softens a little as I bring attention there. I try to feel more in my legs, but it pales in comparison to the sensations in my arms. “Overwhelm yourself with sensation.” I try to, and more sensation floods in. Feelings I didn’t realize I was blocking out.
We start shaking water off of us from under a warm shower that’s the perfect temperature for us. I’m so used to it being cold, but it’s more enjoyable now that it’s warm. Shaking with the sense of plenty of time. An endless shower than can last all day. Shaking droplets from the tips of our fingers.
“Let the echo travel further. Feel the shake from your hands travel to your pelvis and the echo from your pelvis to your hands. Create some chaos.” The sources of the shake overlap, and it becomes confusing. Another teacher said this in his class too, and it also struch me. Chaos in our body. Not being able to control where the shakes go, or start, or end. Like the chaos of our lives right now.
We start to get crazy with our silly dances, feel things take us, and disrupt our vertical. “Expend all of your energy for the rest of the day in the next 30 seconds!” I'm exhausted, and I don't know how to expend more. The teacher bring back the delicacy. “Let your exhaustion help you give in more to the delicacy, making it sensual.” Good thing we are, because I don’t have much energy to do more than that.