“You can continue dancing here and you can start teaching here. Dance is not really a thing to be learned. It is not an art; rather, it is a meditation. To think in terms of art is to miss the whole point. You can learn it technically and you can become a technical dancer, but you will miss the reality of it. It will be just the body and the soul will be missing. The soul comes through being meditative. The dance is not the real thing, but a dancing soul! Then the body moves of its own accord. You can make the body move but the soul will not move. The center never follows the circumference but the circumference always follows the center. Two years is enough to learn the know-how. Now it is time to go ahead on your own. So come back, dance, help people to dance, and develop your own style, develop your own ways, develop your own technique. One has to be innovative.”
Through these words, in 1978, Osho opened the doors of my destiny.
I arrived from France in Poona in February 1978. A dancer, choreograph and dance teacher, I, apparently had reached my life dream: To be able to live with, from and towards dancing, in a professional dance company. Yet, deep down, remained some dissatisfaction. I would have loved to ignore it, but this deep inner itch was preventing me from settling in a fixed frame.
The so-called creative world I was coming from was a lot feeding from its own ego. Hence the latent anxiety of having to be seen, recognized, to be special. I knew form experience that dance was much more than a performer satisfaction, than an ego booster. Dance has saved me from committing suicide at some point. I had felt sometimes so much ecstasy, and also such a deep stillness and peace.
But how could dance help me come closer to my Being?
Nobody in France could help me find the way. I heard about a Master who was using dance as part of his meditations. My search led me to Osho in India. I arrived in Bombay airport with these words on my lips “Neither God, nor Master”, like a good anarchist I thought I was. So much for my “strong opinions”. Two days later, I was bowing down to the feet of Osho, with whom I instantly fell in love and my name became Prem Amiyo.
Osho showed me, when I was his medium in energy darshan the luminous lightness of barefooted joyful and wild dancing .The orgasmic letting go, when surrendering to the oceanic energy of the Master, the blending in the waves of the twelve women dancing around, unified with life around me. There, and yet not there as a separate entity, blissfully aware of Osho’s softest touch on my forehead, grounded in the floor under my knees, and yet totally gone in His high energy.
I was not dancing; I was being danced by Him
After years of strong body discipline, training, control and movements mastery, to let the dance flow in its own way without forcing anything, was a big turn in my life. A couple of months after my arrival, Osho asked me to lead “ Nartan”, a dance group where we were exploring the trilogy:
Dance as an art
Dance as a therapy
Dance as a meditation
Later on, in 1989, Osho invited me to explore Dance as an objective, sacred art with Gurdjieff movements. Osho asked me to look at the last 10 min of the movie “Meetings with Remarkable Men”, by Peter Book and Mme De Salzmann, in order to find the keys hidden behind the Gurdjieff Movements, and start teaching them in the commune. Little did I know that I was engaging into what would become a major part of my outer and inner life.
The vision of these Movements electrified my skin, and I spent two to five days watching nonstop the strange Movements concisely edited in the Movie, trying to decipher the choreographies. Something strongly caught my attention, to the point that I could hardly breathe. Even though the dances were beautiful and charismatic, it was not aesthetics and beauty that were mesmerizing, but something behind the visible movement, an inner state that was reflected through a particular quality of presence on the face of the dancers. Here was in my eyes a dance "technique" which involved obviously not just the body, but the whole of the being. A dance was not created; rather dancers were created through it. They seemed to be animated by forces inherent to the movements themselves, by a new substance. I sensed that each outer movement was just the tip of the iceberg, inner forms laid within, a living path and a path for life. Behind the dance was an absolute unmoving state of consciousness. Maybe I would finally have an opportunity to embody my long years search for a meeting between meditation and dances. And I happily dived, body and soul, into what would become a totally new discipline for my body, mind and heart. This was the first impulse, nourished by the Master, who sent me wholeheartedly into the discovery of the secrets hidden behind those Movements, and up to this day, the journey goes on for me.
Three months later, Osho left his body, and I felt that his offer was such a beautiful farewell gift from Him. There are no words to express my gratitude to Osho for opening this search. He pushed me in the swimming pool before I could swim with so much love: This beautiful and confronting door towards myself, my shadows and lights, opened. Sharing the beauty I love became the core of my life. To this very day, Osho is guiding me through the inner dance of ups and downs.
To enter Osho Mandir in Osho Nisarga, and to see at first his radiant face welcoming us is a constant reminder of the responsibility he gave us, to embody his dreams.
-- Ma Prem Amiyo
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