What if failure is just another word for play?

The other day, I went to the beach and improvised along the ocean. ⠀

It wasn’t my “best” dancing. ⠀

But there was something alluring about that imperfection.

The uneven ground inviting me off balance, sand derailing my pathways, the salty ocean wind a dance partner all of its own… ⠀

This return to my body feels important to me. ⠀

A vulnerable, tender thing that often feels like failure…⠀

But what is failure if not play in disguise?⠀

And what is liberation if not play? ⠀

***

Please know, as we return to our dancing, moving bodies, after 1 yr+ of highly stagnated lives, that you have the right to feel the FULLNESS of that return.⠀

The stumbling, the falling, the awkwardness, the weak muscles, the shortness of breath, the pandemic panza, the vulnerable reawakening of muscles you haven’t used in months, the beauty of being a living breathing body that gets to learn and fail and play…

ALL OF IT.⠀

I just started going back to dance class a few weeks ago, and it’s been a real humbling experience. Simultaneously loving the return of rhythms and movements that had lied dormant in my bones all these months, and spiraling with anxiety in all the moments my body simply could not keep up.  ⠀

The more I talk to folks though, the more I’m realizing I’m not alone in this feeling. I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve heard someone self-consciously talk about needing to get rid of their “covid belly”, or talk about how terrified they are of dancing again…⠀

***

⠀

Here’s an invitation: what if you met that fear with curiosity & play?

(What if curious is just another word for love? What if failure is just another word for play?)

What might you find?⠀

⠀

Video credits…⠀

musica: Iemanjá⠀

movement improvisation: Marina Magalhães, ocean water, sand & maresia ⠀

*I don’t have the rights to this song 

A Call for Darkness: Postpartum Lessons for Emerging Out of Pandemic

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction… We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.

— Sonya Renee Taylor

In the last week I have hugged dear friends and family members I have not seen in the flesh in over a year. I have traveled by airplane for the first time in 18 months. I have enjoyed a meal while sitting inside a restaurant for the first time in 15 months. I have found myself in public settings anxiously trying to remember how to do the most innocuous things— hold eye contact, negotiate personal space with strangers, and respond when asked a question.

The anxiety that blossomed in my chest as I sat at the airport terminal two days ago, getting ready to travel outside of Los Angeles for the first time since pandemic, was visceral and undeniable. While I watched a troubling sea of normalcy unfold around me— people bustling to get in line, buying snacks from the kiosk, scrolling on their phones— all I could manage was slow and deliberate breathing.

I was reminded in that moment that—sure, the world around us may be “going back to normal”, but our bodies know better.

Our bodies hold the memory of quarantining in our homes for most of the last 15 months. Of watching as COVID death tolls skyrocketed around the world— over 500,000 deaths in the US alone, with numbers in Brazil (400,000+) and India (300,000+) still climbing. Of witnessing (and partaking in) an explosion of social uprisings—in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, state-sanctioned killings in Colombia, and the devastating 11-day bombing of Gaza by Israeli military.

In this moment, we are reckoning with death and grief in unprecedented ways. And I can’t help but notice the similarities between this collective reckoning and my own from this past year.

Last summer, I had a 14-week miscarriage, following a 10-week pregnancy. And earlier this year, I had a 5-week miscarriage, following a 6-week pregnancy. My journey with pregnancy loss has deeply defined me— something I have tried to be open about through social media and blog posts, in an attempt to normalize this devastating and painfully taboo subject that an estimated 1 in 3 pregnant people experience.

I can’t help but notice the painful poetry of this past year, having experienced the deepest grief of my life as I watched the world around me do the same.

I do not know what postpartum is like when it follows the birth of a living child. I only know it as an act of mourning. An impossible period of time, where one must contend with life in the wake of devastating loss. With what is being born out of what is dying.

I can’t help but notice that this is the same space we are collectively finding ourselves in now, as we emerge from global pandemic.

As someone who has been reckoning with this space in a very personal way for a year now, I want to share that there is profound wisdom and power here. In this darkness. A darkness that is, “as much of the womb as of the grave,” as Rebecca Solnit so artfully says in her book, Hope In the Dark. One that resembles, “the silence of nightfall, where we can hear the silenced voices amplified by the echo of stillness,” as my compañera and teacher Thea Monyeé recently wrote in her IG platform.

But perhaps Audre Lorde captured it best when she wrote…

“There is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut, stanchions against (y)our nightmare of weakness and of impotence. These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” ”

— Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury"

I pray that we have the courage to stay in this darkness, long enough to learn from it.

That, as we transition out of our quarantines, we recognize our grief and make space for it. That we wear it, however uncomfortably, as we make our tender way back to each other.

That we allow our bodies to be slow and heavy in the transition. To be awkward and rusty and real when we finally see our beloveds in the flesh.

That, when we are unsure of how to grieve, we turn to the death doulas for guidance. And the grieving mothers, who have held death in their wombs and chosen to live nonetheless.

That we put money, time, energy, and resources towards the ancestral traditions that teach us how to be in harmony with the natural world. That we listen to Black and Indigenous voices who have been preserving and cultivating this knowledge for centuries.

That we prioritize funding the artists, healers, and educators who can help us make sense of this past year. Whose offerings will help us hold the complexities of pain, grief, joy, guilt, gratitude, and transformation we are collectively contending with.

I know I am not the only one praying for this.

Manifesting this.

Enacting this into the world.

Are you?

Goin’ out with a bang: Dancing Diaspora Farewell Season

Querides, 

In this moment, I feel nothing but gratitude for the loving experiment that has been Dancing Diaspora. 

When I started the community class back in January 2017, I never imagined that it would grow into the multi-faceted platform and widespread community it is today. Back then, my intention was to have a space where I could explore ways of moving that I loved and was having trouble finding in other classes in Los Angeles. A dance practice that reflected my own border-crossing experience as a Brazilian immigrant in the US-- one that flowed between many rhythms and movement languages, and honored the ancestral African and Indigenous roots of these diasporic cultures. 

As I saw this intention resonate with more people (our Thursday night classes at Pieter Space packed at capacity week after week!) I realized this went way beyond me. Dancing Diaspora took on a life of its own, asking me as its Founder to listen and respond. With each season, I felt myself grow as a teacher and community leader. I learned what it meant to guide 50+ bodies at once, to earn people’s trust in holding space for them, to have care and compassion for where every-body is at, and no matter where that may be, to know that they are full of divine expression and possibility.  

***

This past year has been full of unprecedented changes for all of us. And while our collective never foresaw having to adapt our platform online, we were blown away by the love and support you showed us week after week at our Zoom offerings. Getting to see old smiling faces, welcome new community members from all over the world, and feel connected across hundreds of living room dancefloors was by far one of the highlights of our year!   

But as the world shifts, we shift with it. And after much reflection, our collective members have decided it’s time for us to transition away from our work with Dancing Diaspora. Looking back on the 4 years of this beautiful space, we can’t help but feel grateful for everything we created together as a community…

*The 4 years of sweaty Thursday night dance classes that I have had the honor and pleasure of teaching, and no matter what was happening in my life, could turn to for joy and community. 

*The one-of-a-kind Dancing Diaspora Festival, which featured 35+ local artists and provided 3 days of 100% free programming for 300+ community members. 

*The creation of our beloved Dancing Diaspora Collective and the many online offerings created by DDC members over this past year, done under the most challenging of pandemic conditions. 

*And above all, this vibrant community of mover-shakers who helped create the unique culture of healing exchange that is at the heart of Dancing Diaspora, especially the Black and Brown women and gender non-conforming folks who have always been at the center of our space.

As we close out Dancing Diaspora, we honor this incredible community that has supported and sustained us since 2017. To that end, we are thrilled to share with you... the Dancing Diaspora Farewell Season!

I will be teaching my signature DD class one last time, as well as hosting some of my favorite mestras for Thursday night classes in March & April— including Vera Passos, Rosangela Silvestre, Kati Hernandez, Rachel Hernandez, and a very special Virtual Dance Jam hosted by mi comadre Soy Nalgona!

See more info below & REGISTER HERE!  

***

As is true of all endings, I know many beautiful new beginnings await us on the other side of this bittersweet good-bye. And that, no matter where we go, we get to take with us what matters most from Dancing Diaspora... our beloved community, and our commitment to embodying radical joy. 

I can’t wait to celebrate all we have created together and dance with you in this Farewell Season! 

Do fundo do meu coração, obrigada… and see you on the (virtual) dancefloor! 

Com amor & carinho sempre,

Marina