Since 2012 when I re-discovered my dancing body, and re-found my body through the patterns of the dance, I would say that the dance-floor has become a playground for me. 





For a decade of years now, my best pastime of release, relaxation, amd revelation has been movement meditation, aka conscious dance. 





I’ve been drawn to practices such as 5Rhthyms, Open Floor, Movement Meditation, FreedomDance and BodyPrayer – and often in the spirit of Holy Play.





Lisa of dVerse has given us the poetry-prompt of Play, to play with tonight.





I’m publishing below a poem that I wrote six years ago in response to a dance workshop in London, led by Angela Grifffiths.





(The only explicit mention of Play is the word-play offering – significant concepts written on coloured cards – on the workshop’s shrine.)





It was accepted last year for publication by The Pine Cone Review, in their issue ‘Glissade’ on Dance.





Then I chose to withdraw it because, in contravention to their rules, I had previously released it on Facebook as a thank you to Angela. 





So here is a foretaste of May in London, with birdsong and the bruised fragrance of Elder trees.












Had a movingly great time dancing at the 'Patterns with Presence' workshop, with Angela Griffiths and friends on Sunday 14 May 2017, at London School of Capoeira, Finsbury Park - and wrote this:



Patterns with Presence – expanding and contracting
with love to all who danced that day!

They shrouded the mirror,
as if the only reflection
was to be in another's eyes;

They mantled the shrine
with the golden cloth of generosity,
roses, hearts, the slow expansion
and contraction of a heartbeat,
a litany of opposites, of word play...
all these they laid upon it.

The walls were pure white. Behind the frosted panes, 
a vineyard of aspiration, a tangle of rooftops
and high-rise lebensraum.

They opened the shutters wide
and beyond, framing the attic windows, the elder tree
still bore the heady musk of promise,
the whisper of passion on the breeze,
the soft, embodied confidence
of vegetation in its springtime,
burgeoning towards culmination...
ribboning home to the 
centre of the labyrinth.


© Kathy Labrum McVittie  14 May 2017