Live Circle Dance with Brian Steere

Live Circle Dance

What is a livingcircle event?

     Firstly I invite and hold the circle.

     What is this?
     A simple willingness to join and hold a relationship in which we can be present together through a journey of music, song, dance and silence. This is often felt as a shedding of cares and coming into a timeless and connected sense of being alive.

     Then I share and teach the dance in a living way that communicates and inspires the musical and heart ‘feel’ of the dance.

     I maximise the natural capacity to learn in joy without a sense of separative self based effort or strain.

     We find the dance together as I demonstrate it musically and often in slow motion – with attention to whatever dancers need to discover it in themselves.

     Then I leave the circle of dancers and play and sing the music!

     This means that the dancers not only receive the dance but then discover that they hold it without ‘leaning’ on me. This requires dancers to become more involved in conscious relationship, which in turn raises the level of awareness and communication in the dance. I do not promote ‘learning the steps’ and dancing as if one were a separate unjoined private reality! I seek to uncover the dancer within and have every faith that where there is willingness to join - there is a dancer.

     In playing and singing: There may be other singers and musicians join with me but not necessarily so. Holding a quality and presence in musical relationship is at once intimate and universal.

     Being at home in both music and dance I am sensitive to the nuances of what ‘works’ with particular dance choreographies. But the essence is to open to being moved rather than to take a mechanical approach. Music that moves me, not surprisingly will also move those who are with me. And when we are moved in spirit, it is not difficult for that to express in our bodies. It is in this relationship that I share and others may join in this relationship such that one day I may be able to choose what instrument to play or whether to dance this one! Meanwhile I sing and play guitar.

     Live music as relationship tends to be different from performance. And both are different from recordings. There is a freedom to rediscover what we are, behind and apart from what we seem to have made of ourselves. Risking this freedom is opening into life in trust. Music and dance are simple ways in which to meet and share in if that is our intent.

     The times we live in have seemingly grown darker, with fear driven agendas and ‘ways of living’ that have become mere management of assets in competition and scarcity. Unless we keep our receptivity to inspiration open we will not only become sleepwalking automatons running old programs, but also fall prey to the endless propaganda that would manipulate you and I to perpetuate lovelessness.

The realm of the spirit is our natural being right here in our everyday and yet so few see it or see witnesses on its behalf. If love is in our lives then it needs expression to be renewed.

     Circle dance offers a tool and a path and a meeting place in a world that is forgetting that externals are meaningless outside the purpose for which they are used. That ongoing commitment to life is to discover that which opens pathways where there seem none and that sharing love is the natural extension of wholeness by which we meet a vision of each other in light rather than misperceived through fear’s dark glasses.

Brian 2008