THE LONGDANCE
... and the journey continues ...
A Poem
We have come
to be Danced
by
Jewel Mathieson
click here
Here's more on the music of
the Longdance Dance
Here's a sample
of some
Longdance Music
The Longdance is a ceremonial journey of
relationship, healing, learning, and celebration.
We call home and integrate the different aspects of ourselves,
the energies that guide us, and the nature
in and around us.
Through the mediums of dancing,
music making, artwork, story telling, communing with
nature, self-reflection, and declaring and energizing our intentions,
we honor, enact and express our soul's journey,
with its spectrum of triumphs and challenges.
Bridging and integrating the personal, archetypal, and the
spiritual, the Longdance welcomes and honors the primal, humorous,
intense, mundane, sublime, and profane --
the full range of our human experience, dark and
light.
We call ourselves and one another
forth in living and loving fully.
"A ritual is a form of action done with intention.... Really, any action can be a ritual if it is done with an awareness that brings you more into connection with yourself and your world. Ritual is the means of connecting. Ceremonial involves a number of rituals that are woven together into a whole for the purpose of effecting/changing/transforming a pattern of energy. Ceremonial can facilitate release, renewal, centering, inspiration, insight, vision."
Elizabeth Cogburn,
modern pioneer of ritual and ceremony,
"Warriors of the Beauty Way"
Longdance Dates for 2009
Mark your calendars:
March 20-22
June 19-21
Sep 25-27
Dec 18-20
In addition, we have a workday before our Spring Longdance:
Longdance Workday
A time to prepare the lodge, the grounds, gather firewood, build and celebrate our relationships.
Date and Time- TBA
LONGDANCE DESCRIPTION
We dance four times a year on or close to the
Solstices and Equinoxes.
We begin on Friday evening and close early Sunday afternoon.
Friday: Set-up, Opening Circle and
Sweat Lodge Ceremony
Saturday: Preparatory Gates, Dinner, Siesta,
Dance Proper, and Council
Sunday: Yoga, Circle, Takedown, Feast of food and acknowledgments.
The Preparatory Gates involve body based
expressive arts work and ceremony that honor
the seasons and prepare and deepen us for
the Dance Proper. These Preparatory Gates
involve an activation to movement, sound, imaging, physical contact, enactment, breath
work, listening, meditation, sharing of the heart, drawing,
and ritual.
We share a meal, followed with a siesta.
The Dance Proper (3-5 hours) is an extended
dance with live music that centers on an 'inner-courtyard' created by a 6-step line dance, in
which anyone can enter to dance/enact whatever
they want to dance/enact - by themselves
or with others. When needed, one can rest
(preferably in the courtyard space), fuel
up on provided snacks, and take care of toileting.
For the Summer and Fall dances, we do the
Longdance outdoors on the earth around a fire.
For the Spring and Winter and when weather
is very extreme, we do most of the Longdance
inside, yet we do still have some time outside
in nature.
June 2000 Patrick Crowley, Nancy Koury,
and Kevin Makarewicz, the longdance core group,
been committed to holding the Longdance,
doing personal and core group development
between dances, developing the Longdance
ongoing community, and sharing the Longdance
with new people as volunteer service work.
Kevin Makarewicz has committed to dance a
Longdance every season since 1995 and to
continue this for the rest of his life. The
leadership style of the Core Group is to
lead from example engaging in the process
and leading from that place.
LONGDANCE INTENTIONS
I Dance:
- To celebrate life energy.
- For the joy of dancing.
- To express my gratitude for life.
- To attune to authentic expression.
- To own my story, to be the author of my
life.
- To attune to, declare, and live my intentions
and goals.
- To honor my and your primalness (instinctive
animal body and being).
- To have/be in the many selves and archetypes
I live with and not let them run me.
- To embrace my shadow and hold a space for
you to embrace yours.
- To have/be in my emotions/sensations and
not have them run me.
- To have/be in my stories/interpretations/assessments/judgments.
and not have them run me.
- To have/be in my sensuality/sexuality and
not have it run me.
- To have/be in my vulnerability and not
have it run me.
- To have/be in my power and not have it
run me.
- To explore my perceptions and experience
of my gender and the opposite gender -
the distortions and the truth, the positive
and shadow sides.
- To charge and contain my energy and the
dance.
- To be in relationship.
- To develop my ability to bear witness and
hold a space of possibility and support for
you and your intentions.
- To be in sacred intimacy, an I/Thou connection
that creates a 3rd force, a synergy.
- To be with all my relations- ancestors,
teachers, nature, spirits, and animals.
- To clearly ask for help and what I need.
- To support my own and each other's wisdom
to come through.
- To acknowledge each part of the dance as
a deepening of what has come before and as
an opening of a gate to a new unknown.
- To become and be present.
- For the eternal - where past, present,
and future come together.
LOCATION: Promisek
Skyline Ridge
Bridgewater, CT 06752
Directions
For more information:
call Kevin Makarewicz: 203-698-2465; kevin@thecairn.net
We call home and integrate the different aspects of ourselves, the energies that guide us, and the nature in and around us.
Through the mediums of dancing, music making, artwork, story telling, communing with nature, self-reflection, and declaring and energizing our intentions, we honor, enact and express our soul's journey, with its spectrum of triumphs and challenges.
Bridging and integrating the personal, archetypal, and the spiritual, the Longdance welcomes and honors the primal, humorous, intense, mundane, sublime, and profane -- the full range of our human experience, dark and light.
We call ourselves and one another forth in living and loving fully.
modern pioneer of ritual and ceremony,
"Warriors of the Beauty Way"
Mark your calendars:
March 20-22
June 19-21
Sep 25-27
Dec 18-20
In addition, we have a workday before our Spring Longdance:
Longdance Workday
A time to prepare the lodge, the grounds, gather firewood, build and celebrate our relationships.
Date and Time- TBA
LONGDANCE DESCRIPTION
We dance four times a year on or close to the
Solstices and Equinoxes.
We begin on Friday evening and close early Sunday afternoon.
Friday: Set-up, Opening Circle and
Sweat Lodge Ceremony
Saturday: Preparatory Gates, Dinner, Siesta,
Dance Proper, and Council
Sunday: Yoga, Circle, Takedown, Feast of food and acknowledgments.
The Preparatory Gates involve body based
expressive arts work and ceremony that honor
the seasons and prepare and deepen us for
the Dance Proper. These Preparatory Gates
involve an activation to movement, sound, imaging, physical contact, enactment, breath
work, listening, meditation, sharing of the heart, drawing,
and ritual.
We share a meal, followed with a siesta.
The Dance Proper (3-5 hours) is an extended
dance with live music that centers on an 'inner-courtyard' created by a 6-step line dance, in
which anyone can enter to dance/enact whatever
they want to dance/enact - by themselves
or with others. When needed, one can rest
(preferably in the courtyard space), fuel
up on provided snacks, and take care of toileting.
For the Summer and Fall dances, we do the
Longdance outdoors on the earth around a fire.
For the Spring and Winter and when weather
is very extreme, we do most of the Longdance
inside, yet we do still have some time outside
in nature.
June 2000 Patrick Crowley, Nancy Koury,
and Kevin Makarewicz, the longdance core group,
been committed to holding the Longdance,
doing personal and core group development
between dances, developing the Longdance
ongoing community, and sharing the Longdance
with new people as volunteer service work.
Kevin Makarewicz has committed to dance a
Longdance every season since 1995 and to
continue this for the rest of his life. The
leadership style of the Core Group is to
lead from example engaging in the process
and leading from that place.
LONGDANCE INTENTIONS
I Dance:
- To celebrate life energy.
- For the joy of dancing.
- To express my gratitude for life.
- To attune to authentic expression.
- To own my story, to be the author of my
life.
- To attune to, declare, and live my intentions
and goals.
- To honor my and your primalness (instinctive
animal body and being).
- To have/be in the many selves and archetypes
I live with and not let them run me.
- To embrace my shadow and hold a space for
you to embrace yours.
- To have/be in my emotions/sensations and
not have them run me.
- To have/be in my stories/interpretations/assessments/judgments.
and not have them run me.
- To have/be in my sensuality/sexuality and
not have it run me.
- To have/be in my vulnerability and not
have it run me.
- To have/be in my power and not have it
run me.
- To explore my perceptions and experience
of my gender and the opposite gender -
the distortions and the truth, the positive
and shadow sides.
- To charge and contain my energy and the
dance.
- To be in relationship.
- To develop my ability to bear witness and
hold a space of possibility and support for
you and your intentions.
- To be in sacred intimacy, an I/Thou connection
that creates a 3rd force, a synergy.
- To be with all my relations- ancestors,
teachers, nature, spirits, and animals.
- To clearly ask for help and what I need.
- To support my own and each other's wisdom
to come through.
- To acknowledge each part of the dance as
a deepening of what has come before and as
an opening of a gate to a new unknown.
- To become and be present.
- For the eternal - where past, present,
and future come together.
We dance four times a year on or close to the Solstices and Equinoxes.
We begin on Friday evening and close early Sunday afternoon.
Friday: Set-up, Opening Circle and Sweat Lodge Ceremony
Saturday: Preparatory Gates, Dinner, Siesta, Dance Proper, and Council
Sunday: Yoga, Circle, Takedown, Feast of food and acknowledgments.
The Preparatory Gates involve body based expressive arts work and ceremony that honor the seasons and prepare and deepen us for the Dance Proper. These Preparatory Gates involve an activation to movement, sound, imaging, physical contact, enactment, breath work, listening, meditation, sharing of the heart, drawing, and ritual.
We share a meal, followed with a siesta.
The Dance Proper (3-5 hours) is an extended dance with live music that centers on an 'inner-courtyard' created by a 6-step line dance, in which anyone can enter to dance/enact whatever they want to dance/enact - by themselves or with others. When needed, one can rest (preferably in the courtyard space), fuel up on provided snacks, and take care of toileting.
For the Summer and Fall dances, we do the Longdance outdoors on the earth around a fire. For the Spring and Winter and when weather is very extreme, we do most of the Longdance inside, yet we do still have some time outside in nature.
June 2000 Patrick Crowley, Nancy Koury, and Kevin Makarewicz, the longdance core group, been committed to holding the Longdance, doing personal and core group development between dances, developing the Longdance ongoing community, and sharing the Longdance with new people as volunteer service work. Kevin Makarewicz has committed to dance a Longdance every season since 1995 and to continue this for the rest of his life. The leadership style of the Core Group is to lead from example engaging in the process and leading from that place.
LONGDANCE INTENTIONS
I Dance:
- To celebrate life energy.
- For the joy of dancing.
- To express my gratitude for life.
- To attune to authentic expression.
- To own my story, to be the author of my life.
- To attune to, declare, and live my intentions and goals.
- To honor my and your primalness (instinctive animal body and being).
- To have/be in the many selves and archetypes I live with and not let them run me.
- To embrace my shadow and hold a space for you to embrace yours.
- To have/be in my emotions/sensations and not have them run me.
- To have/be in my stories/interpretations/assessments/judgments.
and not have them run me.
- To have/be in my sensuality/sexuality and not have it run me.
- To have/be in my vulnerability and not have it run me.
- To have/be in my power and not have it run me.
- To explore my perceptions and experience of my gender and the opposite gender -
the distortions and the truth, the positive and shadow sides.
- To charge and contain my energy and the dance.
- To be in relationship.
- To develop my ability to bear witness and hold a space of possibility and support for you and your intentions.
- To be in sacred intimacy, an I/Thou connection that creates a 3rd force, a synergy.
- To be with all my relations- ancestors, teachers, nature, spirits, and animals.
- To clearly ask for help and what I need.
- To support my own and each other's wisdom to come through.
- To acknowledge each part of the dance as a deepening of what has come before and as an opening of a gate to a new unknown.
- To become and be present.
- For the eternal - where past, present, and future come together.