A Sense of Belonging

Julie Forsey writes…

We have just arrived back in Lower Hutt from our first real holiday since we arrived in New Zealand – a week together, just me and my partner Callan and freedom to explore this beautiful land. We travelled North (they say it’s warmer there) and went skiing, caving, horse riding, and then – oh joy! – three days of 5Rhythms dance, with Christina, Geash and Sacha.  The best kind of holiday!

It is a year now since we emigrated here from Scotland with my two children, a year of hard work, adjustment and settling in.  I miss the community of 5Rhythms dancers that I knew in Scotland, people that I had danced with over the previous 8 years, laughed and cried with and shared that deep, wordless sense of connection that comes with being together in this way.

At the Friday night class in Aukland with Christina, I felt again that sense of connection, of belonging.  Here in a room full of strangers, without a word being said, I was welcome.  Welcome just as I was in that moment, me in my dancing body, accepted just as I am.  And that sense of simple human connection is something that is so fundamental that when it is experienced it feels like a deep need has been met something that we did not know was missing from our busy insular lives until we find it, and a part of us says ‘Yes, yes, this is familiar, this is right’.

Yet it is something so light, so evanescent, something which is alive and changes moment by moment, which cannot be faked or forced, but is so delicious when it arises.  For me in that moment, in the Blockhouse Bay Boat Club under a roof pounded by winter rain, I felt for the first time that I had really landed here in New Zealand.

I have danced 5Rhythms in many different towns and countries, and met dancers from all over the world who drop in to a local class wherever they are travelling.  The language is always the same, the language of movement and connection, the common experience of our simple humanity.  When you dance 5rhythms it is an amazing thought that you are part of a huge tribe of dancers, dancing all over the world, strong and committed and also free to come and go, to drop in to the dance whenever we choose knowing that we will be welcome.

I am excited to be offering new classes in Lower Hutt, Monday evenings from 24 August at Secret Level, 229a High Street Lower Hutt, 7-9pm. All the details on our website – www.5rhythms.co.nz

I look forward to dancing with you there!

Love Julie