and silent spaces. I vow as I did all those many years ago to you, to continue my service to all the people who show up wanting to dance. –Vinn Martí
“ dance why you can’t be present right now.”
Gabrielle’s work hasn’t just informed my creative life—it is my creative life. In fact, before I came across the rhythms I never considered myself a creative person at all. Gabrielle showed me that magic is real, pleasure is possible, and everything can be a creative action. The rhythms are simply a map—it’s the spirit inside of them that is the real deal, and that has got into my bones, blood, and breath so that everything I am is infused with that aliveness. –ADAM BARLEY When I first met Gabrielle 34 years ago she didn’t just wear black—she wore purple, lavender, pale pink, and grey. She once carried a plastic pistol into the workshop room to “shoot us alive” and often danced us till dawn until we were too spent to resist the insistent sound of our own rhythm. She taught me to never judge a book by its cover, never consider myself an exception, and never be stingy with myself or anyone else on the dance floor, even when that meant a full-hearted “no thank you.” I miss her wit, her wisdom, and her ability to wordsmith the most complex issues into a simple, digestible bite. She was a shaman for our times, a person who has been wounded, mapped the path to wholeness, and then lit the course for others to do the same. –KATHY ALTMAN The spirit of Gabrielle Roth and the 5Rhythms informs every moment of my waking life. All that I am given is a gift. All of life is a dance. I practice turning my suffering into art and my art into healing. I practice sharing this gift with all those who cross my path. Life happens for me, not to me. To practice the art of life is to practice grace 28
consciousdancer.com | spring 2013
When I became a 5Rhythms teacher, my dream was to bring dance to people who couldn’t come to our dance floor. Ten years later when Gabrielle was diagnosed with cancer, I realized that this was the time to do what I have always wanted to do. Gabrielle had started 5Rhythms Reach Out then, and I felt that I needed to go out there and volunteer in the jails, VA hospitals, and recovery centers rather than waiting for the money or for whatever else we thought we should wait for. This was in April 2010, and now we have created Syzygy Dance Project, a non-profit organization, and have 5–7 weekly classes all over the Bay Area working with veterans, inmates, women in recovery, and at-risk youth. –SYLVIE MINOT I was in a weekly class that Gabrielle taught and she somehow got a bit agitated with us. Then she came up with an idea/exercise: she asked us to dance why we could not be 100 percent present right now. Basically she asked us to dance what we were resisting at the moment. I totally went for it and it was so freeing. Still nowadays this is the key to lots of stuck aliveness in the body. Dance what is. –Eva Vigran
and change. In all of my teachings and all of my dances, I find the spirit of Gabrielle guiding me. I dedicate my teaching to all those who wish to come out of suffering and into peace. –LUCIA HORAN My grandma was an extraordinary person. She knew what to say, what to do, and how to shop. She had the coolest style, and I just adored her! She was an incredible lady and had a very humorous side to her. My father used to say that she would talk about the silver desert, the heaven where she will fly away to. She would say, “Dance is the fastest, most direct route to the truth.” I love this quote, and I love my nana. –SOFIA ANSELL This conscious dance practice of Soul Motion has had many fathers: meditation, theater performance skills, yoga, formal dance training from modern and post-modern teachers, spiritual chaplaincy and prayer practitioner, children’s storytelling, and other influences both artistic and spiritual, and yet there has been one mother to this work—Gabrielle. Thank you Gabrielle for your straight-ahead no nonsense view of what we are here to do as holders of the dance spirit, to sweat our ecstatic prayers and dance until we drop inward to the still
I first met Gabrielle in 1979 at Esalen. I was 17 years old and in a huge life crisis that included the death of my mother. Gabrielle’s teaching showed me, step by step, rhythm by rhythm, how to move back into the bones of my own existence. Her basic teaching I believe can be summed up as the possibility of saying an embodied YES to all that we experience, including our difficulties, through finding a way to move with it. This YES has been the foundation of my spiritual practice as it has for many of her students. –ANDREA JUHAN I remember a time in the early ‘80s when we were dancing in our studio in Red Bank, New Jersey, and I had to leave early for my Gurdjieff meeting; if I was literally one minute late, they would not let me in. As I was leaving the room, Gabrielle danced over to me, grabbed me, and whispered in my ear: “You do know that he is dead, don’t you?” Then she went back to dancing. –Jeffrey Hoffman One day in 1977 I was breezing out of Gabrielle’s kitchen as she was having a deep discussion with Dr. Jay about his girlfriend woes. As I was waving a quick goodbye, I overheard her say, “Jay, you need to be with someone less like you, someone more like...” (she looked up at me as I was about to leave) “like Amber!” We both laughed. Gabrielle married us May 17, 1984. We have been together since, raising our three daughters and dancing the 5Rhythms in every aspect of our lives! – AMBER AND JAY KAPLAN