04/02/2026
April Classes (All times Pacific)
(scroll down for April's focus)
Mondays, 5 pm
RSVP requested by Sunday at 6pm
Wednesdays, 11:30 am
Saturdays, 9:30 am
Saturdays, 11:30 am — IN PERSON ONLY
at Dance Place, 2650 Truxtun Road, Studio 204
The Saturday 11:30 am class is in-person only.
All other classes are via Zoom, or you're welcome to join me in my home-studio in Bankers Hill.
I have room for at least 6 people, and there's plenty of space to dance off-camera if you prefer.
Let me know if you'd like to come so I can move furniture!
Please message or email if you'd like to join me in my home-studio in Bankers Hill, or join via Zoom.
[email protected]
Classes are offered by donation. Suggested donation: $10
Please don't let cost keep you from experiencing the joy of movement! I am so nourished by our community, seeing your faces is my biggest reward.
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April's Focus:
Liberating Ourselves from The Narrow Places
Passover, which begins tonight, celebrates the Israelites being liberated from slavery in Egypt. That's the tale we get in the Bible and from films like "The Ten Commandments" and "Prince of Egypt." And it offers important lessons about treating "the stranger" with justice and compassion, because "once we were strangers in the land of Egypt."
But the story isn't just long ago and far away. The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, means "the narrow place." Passover invites me to consider how, right here and now, I'm in Mitzrayim: trapped in constricting ideas about myself and the world; enslaved by my own and generational pain; perhaps so blinkered that I can't imagine other ways of being. Maybe that resonates with you, as well?
The walls I've constructed may feel so thick—and the world feels so full of suffering and fear—how do I free myself? How do I transform my narrow place into a birth canal? Rabbi Yael Levy, whose website is called "A Way In," suggests beginning with these questions:
1. How do we go out from the narrow perspectives and constricted thoughts that so deeply divide us?
2. How do we soften our tender, vulnerable hearts in a world of such violence, pain and fear?
3. How do we cross over into a new way of being in which all people, all life, earth herself, are treated with dignity and sacred care?
4. What will guide us through this wilderness?
And she offers some answers.
Every time we approach each other and ourselves with curiosity and interest rather than with harsh judgment and dread we loosen the constriction that keeps us from each other.
Every time we are able to act with compassion rather than anger and fear we stem the flow of aggression and pain.
Each time we pause to appreciate beauty, to wonder at mystery, to give thanks, a new pathway opens.
And each time we look up, ask for help and remember we are not alone strength and guidance finds us.
This wisdom feels like a lovely source of focus for our community practice this month.
"Shed Your Grace Upon Us" — Rising Appalachia
Original song by Rising Appalachia featuring Branden Lewis.Website: https://www.risingappalachia.com/Store: https://stores.portmerch.com/risingappalachia/Tou...
