Onsight Dancing

Anna Sun

Anna onsighting “The Morrel” in Terra Nova

Every soundscape creates a wall in front of me. A terrain, a playground. As this new song unfolds a route is created through time, and my body brings it into space. Every beat a hold, every timbre a texture, every tonal nuance gives an angle to that which I interact with. Instead of climbing, the engagement is dance.

Onsight dancing, nothing to be rehearsed or performed.

To move with the sound I must let go. To scale this feature I must release the fear of failing, falling, flailing, imperfection. I can’t predict where the song will go, what turns will be taken, terrain born into existence. I must trust my body to flow over what comes to me in space, in time. I don’t know what shapes I’ll take, what the cliff of sound will bring out of me.

And in the unknowing, absolute freedom, presence, ego-abandon. Learning how I am and opening to new patterns created within.

I could never think this up, what I’m doing right now. It was the nature of the rock that brought it out of me, the character of the song.

And when the intricacies of me and my terrain combine, a new entity is born. Something neither of us could be without the other. The 3rd party, the relationship. The undoing of routine and the breathing in the now. I am true with the music, the mountain, they are true with me. We change and progress the other. They are great teachers, offering wisdom, holding a mirror to me.

The rocks, the songs, somehow they flow together in musical-space synesthesia. The climb, the dance, how fun to ride the unfolding wave of an onsight experience.