Heartbreak and Reassurance

Driving in the car to a Dancing Heart gig a few weeks ago, I asked my car mates if they wanted to hear some new music. Yes, I hear them say. I warn that it is folk music and that it can be intense. I hear, What – are we not intense?

Then I start the title cut from the Hungarian folk group Muzsikas of their 1982 LP/CD Nem ugy van most mint volt regen…(It Is Not Like It Used To Be). The snarling double bass breaks the silence and lays down a defiant, rhythmic line, going on like this for some moments. Then, over the bass, a tight, insistent, ornate fiddle twirls and tumbles like a bird startling and vaulting from the trees. After these two have established their flight together, on top of this, the moment is seized by the flat unadorned earthy plaints of traditional singer Marta Sebestyen. The three go on together in this way, unambiguously, for all to hear.

Then, car mate Peter reacts, “Oh my – heartbreak and reassurance at the same time…” The music is startling, bald, bold as a hero, sensual and knowing. The New York Times called it, "Ebullient...raucous."

Muzsikas is an extraordinary group with a performing, touring and recording career that started in 1972. They are responsible for carrying forward folk music traditions that otherwise would have been lost. I first came upon them when I bought their remarkable CD Maramaros: Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

I think I’m saying the obvious when I say many folk music players, singers, dancers and listeners go to the folk literature of stories, music and dance for a kind of soul food. We go for something that connects and nourishes us, through participation, to memory, emotion, beauty, and a sense of belonging. The music of Muzsikas can help engender this for me.

The folk corpus, taken as a whole, I believe, is about integrity – how to get it back after you’ve lost it, at a personal, interpersonal, village and larger level. I think it’s about how to make things whole. The Jungians and mythologists have written much about the dense psychological material embedded in the folk tales and sagas, and they show how they might be teaching stories, relevant to personal and community life. Intact indigenous peoples take care of their cultural stories as alive, precious and usually private, and involve themselves with them as a central part of community life.

I hunger for the feeling of integrity and wholeness, and I get glimpses of it now and then, and some of my deepest experiences of it can happen when I’m playing, singing, dancing or participating in a story. And that is why I keep coming back to the music, songs, dance and stories. And I keep hoping that I stay vulnerable to those flashes of beauty that might split my heart open to moments of communion with who and what is around me. Maybe the rich life is that lived with others inside a participatory folk opera of good heart?

(Don't) Push the Red Button

We're in the heat of acting out a moment in a Dancing Heart™ session at the Fairview Seminary Home in Red Wing, Minnesota. The Dancing Heart™ – Vital Elders Moving in Community is my wife Maria Genné’s and Kairos Dance Theatre's pioneering, national award winning, evidence-based performing arts program for elders that is improving quality of life and reducing costs of healthcare.

"Emily" is telling a story from her childhood, when her family lived in and were caretakers of an old mansion, and the kids liked to sneak off and play on the elevator, being careful not to push the red button, which would set off the alarm. DH Teaching Artist Carla Vogel is interviewing Emily and prompting the telling of the story. As a Teaching Artist, I've jumped in to act out the moment and involve others in the group of about twenty-five elders, caregivers and volunteers. And Teaching Artist Peter Podulke is seeded in the group – with his big voice, in this moment he is like a one person Greek Chorus, warning, "Oh...the parents better not find out..."

I beckon around the room and ask, “Anyone want to play with me on the elevator? C’mon, let’s go!” Peter wheels “Anne” over in her wheelchair to join the elevator play. He asks her, “Do you want to play on the elevator?” She responds, “Why would I want to do that?” We know her well enough to know she still wants to play. We find out later this situation has made her remember a moment in her childhood when she got caught doing something “wrong.” I ask “Bill,” one of the young men from the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Red Wing, to join us in this play. He is with a group that comes to the nursing home to volunteer as an integrative experience prior to release. Dressed in the institution blue polo shirt and khaki slacks, he shrinks back and shakes his head ‘no.’

I’m acting as if the whole room is crowded with me in the little elevator. Then, I notice how enticing is the red button. I make a large slow gesture of going to push the button, saying, “Oh…look at that red button…I think we should push the red button…” Peter and Anne in the wheel chair right next to me, and just about everyone in the room holler, “No…not the red button!” “But I want to...” I say and continue moving toward it. “No, not the red button!” the group booms. “But…” I say. “No…” “Okay,” I relent, “I’ll push one of these other buttons…”

After we disband the play, as the laughs and talking subside, we quickly note that this was just innocent child’s play, no one got hurt, but by not hitting the red button, we’ve made it so we might be able to come back and play on the elevator again. “Don’t you think that’s true?” Emily, Anne and Bill all look relieved and as if they’ve enjoyed all of this. A few moments of mischief, potential conflict and play have been successfully negotiated, with great pleasure. And, we’re all in it, together.

Carl Jung said, “the symbol itself heals.” He also said that there is a “natural gradient within the psyche toward healing and wholeness.” We can simply jump into these moments of play that arise, no matter how humble they look, knowing there is value in fully living in this moment, and trusting and affording sovereignty to individuals involved to have their own experience and make their own meaning from it.

During this play, I think the job of the Teaching Artist is to hold the place I call the ‘ideal parent’ – creating safety to take risks, encouraging involvement and the expression of emotion, and neutralizing and metabolizing shame. And, above all, to encourage the thrill of making and experiencing performance art.

This kind of improvisational play, based in biography, in a trusting creative process, using dance, theater, story, poetry and music, creates “vital engagement” with and between participants – patients, caregivers, and volunteers. This is positively changing institutional cultures and providing enhanced quality of life. It means fewer falls, less medicines and fewer doctor visits, and more laughter and enjoyment for residents. It means more enjoyment for families. It means more satisfaction for staff.

Current institutional partners of Kairos and the Dancing Heart™ include the Wilder, Ebenezer Fairview, Thorp, Phillips, George and Larson Foundations. The program is for elders in various settings, including long-term care, and including elders with Alzheimer's disease.

On Vimeo, you can watch a little mini-documentary I produced on the program, called Dancing Heart™ – Power to Nuture and Heal. And, you can learn more about the program and research findings on the Kairos web site.