"All is in Divine Order" - Vivine Scarlett, Guest Artist at Deep End Week
Our writer-in-residence, Shivani Joshi, shares her experience of Deep End Week 2023:
Sit down and straighten your back, focus on your head balancing above your spine. Lean your
right ear towards your right shoulder. Remember to breathe. Remember not to hike up your left
shoulder. In this position, start nodding your head, as if to say yes. Slowly explore the edges of the
movement. Continue this repetition 5 times. Switch to saying no, looking down at your hip and
then up into the upper left corner of the ceiling, repeating this 5 times. Feel the stretch into your
neck, back, and shoulder muscles. Allow your neck to release the tension that is trapped inside.
Repeat this on the left side.
Moments of rest and relaxation are hard to come by in these busy times. We went from a standstill to accelerating into the future, making up for time lost. Although we began running through life again, Nova Dance’s 2023 Deep End Week: Rest and Reflection was an invitation to stop, to breathe, to sleep, and to find a sense of peace every day.
Throughout the week, the mornings opened with a Body Unbreak session led by Neena Jayarajan, who has a background in Physiotherapy and continues to support dancers in non- clinical settings. Jayarajan encourages participants to check-in with their bodies and identify points of pain, stress, and tension. She guides us through a series of stretches, exercises, and muscle energy techniques to find balance within the body. Every day participants practice self massage and strengthening. Jayarajan moves seamlessly between a holistic approach to releasing tension and a targeted pain relief approach. In finding strategies to release pain from the body, participants find alignment in their bodies.
“All is in divine order… Work with what’s in front of you. You’re guided, no matter what. Believe it.”
Each day, guest speakers came to share what they learned during the pandemic, how they embody rest, and how to overcome the challenges of a precarious work-life balance.
Vivine Scarlett begins her talk with breathwork. Participants are breathing in together, breathing out, holding space, and expanding time. She shares that it takes time to get to a space of self- care. During a reflection of the pandemic, she reminds us that the pandemic actually happened to everybody. “It required me to just stop and be still, I had no choice”, she says, “I can only reflect once I have found rest.” To the artists in the room, she adds, “All is in divine order... Work with what’s in front of you. You’re guided, no matter what. Believe it.”
Tanisha Taitt offers the group deep reflections on the world and the art spaces as they changed over the past few years. As an Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre, she came to run a theatre company with no theatre during the pandemic. Taitt went back to the company mandate – to support artists in the margins. Finding ways to offer funding and support during the pandemic uncovered important questions: How do we make people who are already alienated and isolated feel supported during a time of actual isolation? Taitt advises artists to be critical about what they accept. “Be intuitive”, she says, as she shares how she researches opportunities that align with her time and her voice, “be conscious of the environment you put yourself in.”
Andrea Nann shares her Conscious Body practice and process with the participants. “We are always in process. It’s like seasons. We don’t arrive at a season, we evolve through each cycle,” she tells us. It is difficult to describe the embodied practice and the depth with which participants responded. “I use the word ‘skills’ when referring to increasing sensory capacity,” Nann shares, about how to cultivate intuition and follow our natural rhythm and flow.
Karla Etienne joins us to reflect on what it means to be intentional. She shares the feeling of embodiment of love in your body that nobody can touch. She defines self compassion as making the choices that support the self. “Your emotion is your knowledge. Your body knows better than you”, she shares. Karla reminds us to act according to our values and find the centre that grounds us, so as not to burn out. ‘It gave me a sense of comfort that I could do many things”, she says. She tells us that enjoying the senses is a counter power to the system. How you create and experience your life is political, it shifts the way you live.
Cole Alvis asks us when and how we move towards our centre, or when we avoid it. What does it look like, what does it feel like? Actively leaning back into her centre, she starts by reading poems. She recounts how she holds all the versions of herself together, each version is whole and deserves love and attention. Alvis reflects on how we thank our ancestors, but never think about how they might be thinking of us, would they be proud to see us come into ourselves?
“We float into different dimensions, through parallel worlds, dismantling the body and letting it fly. Being guided into relaxation felt intentional and necessary.”
Afternoons bring therapeutic art sessions with Rachel Mae Robbins. From the research of Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, Robbins teaches us about the seven different forms of rest; physical, emotional, creative, spiritual, mental, social, and sensory. One afternoon, participants create a piece to represent what each type of rest feels and looks like for them- each one is made in a matter of minutes. The seven pieces, all laid out, show how the internal experience for each type of rest varies within us all. One Deep End Week participant, Hima Batavia, reflects on how creating art from the source, our centre, is vastly different than creating art from anxiety or stress. Art made from a place of release and relaxation creates pieces that feel authentic and grounded.
At the end of each day, Nova Bhattacharya floats us off to imaginary worlds with her. We cuddle up in our blankets, surround ourselves with pillows, and close all the blinds. She begins a guided visualization and leads us to rest with imagery. We float into different dimensions, through parallel worlds, dismantling the body and letting it fly. Being guided into relaxation feels intentional and necessary. One of the participants says they “felt water and energy floating through, and it was very gentle and powerful at the same time”.
On reflecting about the week, another participant tells me that “it was a gift. Everything was thoughtfully curated.” The invitation to rest, to slow down and reflect on life could not have come at a better time. This week was about holding space for the pause, acknowledging what has already been done, and creating the sense of trust between the participants and speakers that allowed for safety. Rest and Relaxation became more than an experience, it became a political idea, to begin learning from the body, to hold oneself carefully, and to share that wholeness with the world.