A journey in Manhattan - 1

She was walking through the cold streets of Manhattan, held to her coat and thinking what that city could taught her those days. The city was as it is, pavements, light posts, streets, bins... the humming of the car and buses, the people walking, traveling in their daily routine abstracted in their own thoughts... Just as she was walking, observing the city, looking to its people dressed with the colors of the city... browns, blacks and grays, ...winter tones, shelter tones... looking for warmth. She has been looking for a few days a studio to rehearse but she couldn't find one due the availability and overpricing. Also she was quite excited to see the city venues and couldn't decide for one or another, as she thought that looking for it was the best way to know the city...

She was walking until she reached a crossroad with a silent street... She thought it may be a shorter way to the hotel, in theory she believed it was in a diagonal towards the direction of that quiet street. It was shop bared, with old buildings of darkened facades due the time and the lack of maintenance. She observed most of the windows were covered with curtains and the basements had the windows at the height of the floor. She took the mp3 player out of her pocket to change the music she was listening to, and the transport ticket dropped to the floor. She crouched to pick it up and realized that one of the windows were open in one of those basements. She got closer to the filthy glass and distinguish a studio of big dimensions, with fabric covered forms stored to the sides of the space and mirrors along one of the walls. It looked like an old dance studio, left abandoned and used for other purposes.

A sudden thought passed through her mind raising some kind of excitement... What if she goes inside? What if she is caught? She didn't want problems... She looked to the sides of the street and to the windows in the buildings. No one was in the street. Her pupils started to dilate and the blood stream increased. She opened the window and sneaked inside.

There was not much light, but her eyes started to adapt to the shadows and her body relaxed as the difference of temperature began to be noticed. She observed the shapes were a sort of sound system with a black cover and the mirrors had a thick layer of dust but still able to see through them. There were more items stored to the sides close to the original door of the space. There was also a sofa, a table with a light and an office chair. It seemed no one had been there for weeks. She walked around until she found herself reflected in the dusty mirrors. She smiled to the look of herself with that big coat she was wearing.

She was listening to an intriguing atmospheric music,... and she started to open her presence to the space, to let her body fill up the visual silence were she was, accompanied with her reflection.She remembered the words of a friend regarding she had to reach the point of confronting herself in the studio for being able to create, breaking the image of reality. A winter reality with a stalking loneliness in good company of the music, the worlds she dream about, the adventures she imagine inspired by the tunes... In that moment she had in her hands the chance to embody with movements those imagery creations in the bare anonymous space.

She breathed deeply, closing her eyes and started to raise awareness of her body. She imagined herself standing in the middle of the room and led her muscles listen to the music until her body started to follow it with shyness, transferring her weight from one leg to the other in a sustained plie, until the swaying began to warm her body slowly but gradually. Her body kept moving acquiring different shapes passing smoothly from one to another getting more and more fluid, faster and faster.

Soon she found herself warmed enough to reach more and more far with her limbs, picturing them as rays of colored lights, drawing the sound vibrations in a three dimensional canvas, ...towards an infinite universe, feeling the eternity of the present moment fed by the inhale and exhale of her rhythmic breath which was one with the movement. Her body changed its shape fluidly and continuously and her presence opened and filled the empty space with lights, landscapes, emotions, strokes, wishes, frustrations, and love-sickness. She drew the loneliness of her ardent soul, she danced her success and her failures, sailing the undulating wave of life, letting her body reach that millimeter more to bring the gravity to its maximum possibilities, contracting and releasing, spinning in an axis passing through the space... Her mind paired her body movement... Each image she visualized had a response in her body, bringing her to a state of happiness and fullness, letting her heart to be invaded by this intensity... she could feel her blood flowing in a muscular symphony making her lighter and lighter each moment, making that millimeter more dream in a state of ecstasy. The soul expressing its millenarian memory living in one moment all of her existence...


And there she was, in between the images, the music, the infinite movement,... dancing restless in that filthy studio of an anonymous street, that cold day of winter...

Magic is a succession of unexpected events, ackwardly familiar, which arises curiosity, excitement and an unanswered interrogation...