A Journey through Holy Week, March 2013

My plan was to offer this event in two places. In Dent in the beautiful Meditation Centre there, and also at Tabor House in Preston.

Come Saturday 23rd March, snow was falling in Dentdale, and dancers from the Brough area and from the northern Ireby were confined behind severe snow drifts. I have postponed the day to 2014!

Tabor House

On Monday 25th Tabor was in sunshine, but those coming from the Dales had a tough journey. We learnt about 10 dances during the first stage if the day, and then brought those dances together with some fine sonnets on the events of holy Week and the Stations of the Cross. The Sonnets are written by Malcolm Guite for his book Sounding the Seasons, but he makes them freely available. My “special” dance for this year is a choreography from Nanni Kloke, to Maria, from a Cd “Via Crucis” from the Theorbist Christina Pluhar with L’Arpeggiata a baroque music ensemble and  also with Barbara Fortuna  – a group of four Corsican men. Well worth a download from iTunes. Also on-line is a film of the group  with the Theodore and Cornetto being played. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11POTypBh2I.

​I combined this dance with this sonnet, from Malcolm, for the fourth Station of the Cross where Jesus meets his Mother.

This darker path into the heart of pain
Was also hers whose love enfolded him
In flesh and wove him in her womb. Again
The sword is piercing. She, who cradled him
And gentled and protected her young son
Must stand and watch the cruelty that mars
Her maiden making. Waves of pain that stun
And sicken pass across his face and hers
As their eyes meet. Now she enfolds the world
He loves in prayer; the mothers of the disappeared
Who know her pain, all bodies bowed and curled
In desperation on this road of tears,
All the grief-stricken in their last despair,
Are folded in the mantle of her prayer.