The return to France is also the return to my mother tongue. Everywhere around me, people speak French, and it always makes a funny impression when I come back from my trip ! I understand everything, everything suddenly seems easy: move, ask for information… Daily life becomes more fluid, I find my bearings. In fact, it also has a tiring effect the first days. Indeed, I understand all the conversations of people in transport, in the street, I hear their comments, their complaints, anecdotes of their life, my ears are solicited permanently. When I’m abroad, I can easily ignore the voices around me. Even though I understand other languages, it’s easier for me to read a book on the bus and forget the conversations that are coming from all over, becoming a background noise. In France, it distracts me… and sometimes even, disconcerts me ! Speaking again French also makes me notice that my jaw, my throat, all the small organs that allow me to talk, are more relaxed. It’s funny ! I did not notice that it caused tensions when I speak English, Spanish… Perhaps the practice of a foreign language requires more effort, not only to the head, who seeks the appropriate vocabulary to express himself but to the body, which is modeled according to its mother tongue, and which must adapt to new sounds to pronounce.
The return to dance is also a return to my mother tongue : the language of the body. The one I’m learning since I was little. Not only his vocabulary- plié, dégagé, centre, ballon, en dehors… – but also nonverbal language. At the bar, the teacher shows an exercise once, gives some quick explanations, and we perform it in music. Here too, it’s fluid. Students and teachers, we understood each other. We just have to read quickly the movement on the body of another human to understand how it works, its mechanics, its rhythm, its musicality. When I was learning dances abroad, I had to relearn everything : the basic positions, how to manage differently the weight of the body, more or less grounded, and also the axis of the body, how to integrate the rhythm with the movements, the coordination of the arms, head, legs… I scanned the body of my teacher with a slower look, from head to toe, and often needed explanations to reproduce. To find its fluidity in my arms, my bust, differently distribute my weight in my supports on the ground and move in space.
When I went back to my usual dance classes in September, I felt very moved. Upon entering the studio, I watched as the students focused on the small ritual to awake their body with gentle movements, often on the floor, and then all together stand at the helm at the arrival of the teacher and the pianist. I immediately thought of the dancers in India and Nepal, who have very different rituals before a dance class: clean the idols, the statues of Shiva-Nataraja or Jagannath, put some oil in the candles and light them, fresh flowers and red powder sindur on the statues and drop them small heaps of rice frof frandes, light the incense, ring the bell… Then, all together, they perform the movement « Namaste » which expresses their gratitude to the Earth ; who, trampled, will endure their innumerable dance steps. I also thought about how we train, which is also like a ritual. Here : pliés, battements, pirouettes, jumps. There, the muscular strengthening, the repetition of more and more rapid warm-up movements, the mudra to soften the hands…
Being back home means a return to all these little things, and many more, which we do realize the importance in our daily lives when we don’t have them anymore.
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Globe-Dancer 