Clip from the DVD of: In the Fire of Grace
This clip is from the dance, Lover Embodied
Choreography and Dance: Banafsheh
Music: Babak Sharifimajd and Pejman Hadadi from their album Release
Recitation: Andrew Harvey
Poem: Rumi
Working on this piece was both challenging and rewarding. I subjected myself to the essence of what I was trying to portray. Love is like a knife that carves out the impurities and the aspects of us that don’t serve the cultivation of our true selves and certainly don’t serve the world! Love is fierce and everything that is not love surfaces in the presence of love, so we can learn to love them. I resonate deeply with the original Persian of the opening lines of this poem. Rumi says, “if you are lover of love, then take a dagger and cut the throat of your shamefulness.” Love and shame don’t exist together. In making this piece, I certainly feel I took a dagger to the throat of my shamefulness and my resistances to what is “proper” and what is “acceptable”. I just danced my heart out and freed myself from the bondage of shame at that time.
