Dear Earthdancers, I survived CI @ 50! Wow, that was one intense, rich and messy journey. Our little caravan just left Oberlin for Earthdance and I’m trying to figure-out, digest and write about this experience while heading back to our soft and amazing home and dance floors. I’m not going into a long story around all the varied experiences at the Critical Mass and would be happy to share more over a cup of tea or a glass of cider if you join us for our sweet Post CI50 Global Village event this weekend. I will share some big lines of our shared dance these days. The Opening Circle was messy and an opportunity to come together as a whole was missed. The invitation for BIPOC identifying folk to split off and gather in a different space while the rest continued with the opening and logistics created a spatial and energetic divide that rippled out through the event and indirectly led to a person being asked to leave the gathering. On the dance floor things felt similar to CI @ 36 and I imagine CI @ 25. Outside of the jams and workshops however this felt like a very different animal. US. Identity politics and racial justice conversations dominated the spaces in between where the glue of a conference is often created. I celebrate the awakening of the US CI community to the complex socio-political context it is dancing in, and its struggle to find answers and healing to and from its painful legacy. At the same time I question the strategies (and lack of them) that the wider leadership of this international CI gathering used to introduce, hold and support individuals and the collective in this work. I don’t know if the polarization that was experienced by many was intentional or just the result of a lack of awareness. Tension in our dances can help them to evolve. A single minded pulling or pushing can also just lead to a dissolution of the dance we’re sharing. To end, I’ll leave you with two quotes from our time together. The first from a dancer from Mexico who in a conversation said: “Oberlin es la cuna de Contact, que no sea su tumba tambien” which translates something like: Oberlin is the cradle of CI let’s not have it be its tomb as well. The second was from our last surreal full group session where someone in a long table conversation said: “with all of this dancing going on around us, we're not getting anywhere!” In learning,
Daniel |
