Next morning, out of curiosity, I decide to Google the name "Laura Dean" since I do not know anyone by that name. What I discover is an American modern dancer, choreographer and composer by the same name who was born in 1945. In her early years, Dean danced for a short time with the "Paul Taylor Dance Company" in New York, a modern dance group I saw perform in the 1970's. This piqued my interest even more especially since, as I'd shared in a previous post, I have always been a huge fan of modern dance.
I learn that Laura Dean eventually started her own Dance Company with a style all her own and is well known in modern dance circles, interestingly, for her "structured movements of spinning and whirling". In addition to spinning and whirling, her choreography at times would include stomping foot patterns, chanting, and singing from the dancers themselves (odd yet wonderful). Dean once remarked: "I spin because I remember spinning and whirling as a child. These childhood memories of whirling came back to me when I was working on movement by myself in a studio in San Francisco in 1968."
As I continue scrolling down on my computer, noting all of her many accomplishments, I come upon another quote by Dean, this time elaborating more fully on her notable love of spinning:
"Spinning is a central fact of the universe. Not only are the planets spinning, but the galaxies are spinning too, and the Milky Way, our galaxy, is a in a spiral pattern. Even our DNA is a spiral. Whatever the universal force is, I feel a kinship . . . " ( "Me too!", I hear myself say out loud.)
She then had this to say:
"I've always in my choreography had a love of grand design and pattern, but at the same time a love for the individual inside of that. That is precisely what we are. We've been placed in this grand design, and it's up to us to decide what to do with it."
As I read this last sentence, a big smile spreads across my face, taking in the serendipity of it all as if the dilemma in my dream, of what to do with my life, had been answered in some strange way by the life and words of a dancer I'd rendezvoused with in my dream.
It answers the question many of us ask at some juncture in our life as we consider the gifts and opportunities before us. What to do with this life we've been given? Will we squander it on distractions and superficialities or take what we've been given and go with it, no matter how odd or simplistic it may look or seem. Laura Dean knew from the time she was a child that she loved to spin and whirl. And later in life, she became a modern day whirling Sufi in her own amazing right.
It got me thinking that what we do doesn't have to be big or complex or even life changing. It can be that one simple thing we just love doing. Like singing, or planting
