| October 2001
An Unexpected Blessing An Interview with Gabrielle Roth and Jonathan Horan by Jami Shoemaker At first glance, you would never guess they were related. She moves with the graceful wisdom of experience, her tall thin figure silent, yet imposing. He bounds through the room with the untamed energy of raw youthfulness. She is dark-haired and angular. Her black clothes scream "Manhattan!" Her eyes say, "Compassion." He is blonde and muscular, a surfer boy in bright orange. His restlessness is infectious. His eyes say, "Passion." She is Mystery. He is Wild Child. But there's a lot more to these two than meets the eye. For starters, they are mother and son. Their common ground? A lifetime of exploration along the dancing path of self-realization. An internationally renowned dance teacher, recording artist and theatre director, Gabrielle Roth has spent 35 years exploring the power of movement, teaching the 5 RhythmsTM, training an international team of instructors and guiding people to get off their feet, move their bodies and shake their souls. Her son Jonathan has been her most avid student. He is now her most sought-after instructor. Recently, I sat down with Jonathan Horan and Gabrielle Roth to talk about their relationship, and the work that binds them. Jonathan, your mother has been doing this work since before you were born. What was it like growing up with Gabrielle? Jonathan Horan: It was beautiful. From a very young age, what I was exposed to was catharsis. And that it was natural and that it was good and that it was healing. I was brought up in that. It was very strange for me to grow up at Esalen [Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., where the seeds of the 5 Rhythms were sown] and then around 6 or 7 years old, I made the big jump out into the world and moved to some other places, and I saw that this [catharsis] was not natural everywhere. And there was a noticeable difference between the people who were working on themselves and the people who weren't. That was really key for me because at that very young and innocent time, I innately felt that this was important, that I liked this energy and that I liked people, and that I got more from people who were taking part in their own process. Having grown up at Esalen, I was not just exposed to Gabrielle's work, but the work of just about everybody who was involved in the human potential movement at that time. There was an incredibly different vibe from where other people were doing their thing and from the room where Gabrielle was working with people -- an enormous difference in their energy as they were walking out of the room. It was very amazing growing up with a mother who was a teacher who got the respect of just about everybody she ran into. I saw how much she embodied this information that she was passing on, and how beautiful that wisdom was for me. By the time I was around 9, I was spending the whole time in a weekend workshop. It was amazing to have the respect of the adults around me, because when you take it out of the head, suddenly we're not talking -- we're dancing; we're relating. There's a connection happening between me -- a 9 year old, and a 35 year old. To me, that served me so much, because I think about all the kids who never got that. All they got was, "Don't speak until you're spoken to." To have felt that connection growing up gave me an enormous amount of confidence -- to know that I had a lot to give even though I was very young. When I got to puberty, it got really intense. And Gabrielle was a smart parent -- she knew I was going to do whatever I wanted to do. But we had a relationship that allowed me to tell her what I was doing and listen to her experience. Then when I went out into the world and did things -- if I was way off, I would feel it. There's something in that that made me take responsibility. I loved having some place to put all that energy that was swirling around; all the experiences and friction with parents and school and teachers and friends and cool people and un-cool people, and to have that all swirl in me in the dance and come out feeling cleansed was a great honor. Dancing the 5 RhythmsTM does seem to be a starting point for journeying through all the layers and layers of our experience. Horan: It's easy to walk around your whole life and miss those layers. The workshops really remind me of writing, because the act of writing forces you to articulate something specific. It's the same thing when you come to a workshop with an intention. In all of our lives, we have all of these experiences floating around in our subconscious that haven't quite been finished. Then if you're somebody like me -- I'll wake up in the morning and just start writing about anything, then suddenly for one reason or another, my mind flashes back to this experience I had when I was 6 years old, so I'll write about what was happening to me at that very moment, and I'm processing that information. It's no longer just floating out there, looming over my head. And in the process of that articulation, I can find the crystal of that experience. Then instead of the experience being this big issue, I now have another way of connecting to the world outside of myself. The workshops seem to be on that same road. You show up, you haven't thought about anything in particular, you move, suddenly it's coming from a different perspective, and it comes down to what you were saying about all those layers. What's the saying? A picture paints a thousand words. Dance and movement probably paint a million. You could write an entire book about growing up -- there's so much to tell. In the act of dancing, that's all rushing through your entire body, and you are telling that story, just in a very different way that's not edited like it would be if you were writing it. So this is about getting out of your head. This is a completely different language, then. Horan: Yeah, and there's not as much respect for it these days. But then, more and more, it's gaining ground -- the power of dance and music. We're reclaiming them. All the [5 Rhythms] workshops are to one extent or another about ritual. You know, we take back ritual; we ritualize our lives within our communities. The further and further we get away from having all these deep dark secrets, and opening up and seeing the full perspective of what is out there when you're in a room with all those people, you realize you're not as isolated or different as you thought you were. Gabrielle Roth: And when we're struggling with those layers of experiences, we don't always do it consciously. We get stuck swirling around inside of it instead of creatively, constructively dealing with it and being responsible for it -- "This is what I'm keeping and this is what I'm letting go of." The dance brings it all to a very essential, ritualistic energetic, which I think is the whole point of this work: to bring everything to that level of essence, that level of energy, where it just moves in rhythms and patterns and waves and cycles and we see it's all a dance. Historically with work of this nature, more women than men will show up for it. You know: "Men don't dance." Jonathan, do you find yourself acting as a kind of role model for men? Horan: We're really working with energy and movement, not dance. That's one of the big issues though -- men and "dancing." Men can fall into [the 5 RhythmsTM] without having all that resistance that they would have to a particular form of dance, which is more about technique. When we dance in this way, it's about working with your energy, with your life. Like martial arts -- balancing, harmonizing, grounding -- and that's universal. That's not men or women. That's everybody. Roth: I think it's even more emotional. You know, men are very physical -- all the games and sports. There's a competitive edge, and there's a form, and rules. And the dance takes us out more into the unknown -- into the space of just being yourself. Being your own energy pattern -- not a hockey player or a football player -- but just feeling all this energy that fuels our need for sports. Then you can ask, "What's really behind the scene? How do I move and what does that say about me? How can I change that and expand and grow?" Horan: And you're going to do better at any sport, or anything else you're doing, if your internal life is in order. If you have an idea of what's going on energetically in yourself, in other people, in a community, in the place where you live -- if you're able to look beyond the surface of everything, then you have an amazing secret weapon. It gets you out of the ego and into the spirit. Out of the ego and into the spirit -- through the emotions. Another area we typically have a hard time exploring. Horan: Yeah, and for me the reason why is because we have the potential to be so destructive. If you bottle everything up for long enough, then it's really scary to even want to touch the edges of it because you're afraid that in that, you're going to lose control and become truly out of control. That's why it's so essential to have some kind of practice that, on a regular basis, allows you to just drain all of that stuff out of your body and empty it. If I don't dance for two weeks, I feel that build-up. If I don't dance for two months, I really feel that build-up -- all that energy inside that has not been addressed. All those things that slip by. Somehow in the dance, they might not be specifically addressed, but on a higher level, your entire body is going through this cathartic process, draining all the aggression and stress and bringing things back into alignment. Without doing 20 years of therapy. Horan: (laughs) Exactly. The beauty of it is that we don't have to talk about it. Well, so much of what we experience we can't put into words. Roth: Yeah, and we don't need to. We really can just release in the dance. It's very organic and you really don't need to know exactly what it is you're releasing. I think all of us as Westerners have been trapped somewhere behind our hearts. Finding a spontaneous and authentic way to express ourselves emotionally is very difficult. It's difficult for all of us. So we share that. We're all trying to access that honesty -- how to be real. To be vulnerable and still be powerful, to know that our power is in our vulnerability, our ability to be truthful and express what is really going on inside of us. And that comes really naturally in the movement. Gabrielle, how do you feel having your son following in your footsteps and teaching your work? Roth: It's a complete blessing. An unexpected blessing. I really didn't expect this to happen, but it happened very naturally. Jonathan was taking the workshops all the time, and he was my most devoted student. He laughed when I said something funny. I really felt his acceptance, his permission. It's such a strange thing, because we think about it in reverse, you know, parents giving their children permission. But children give an equal amount of permission back, to be who we are. And he always gave me that. His presence in the room indicated to me that I must have been doing something right. It just feels like a deep and profound blessing -- not only that he would continue to do this work and teach it and grow inside it and allow me to mentor him, but also that he was willing to share it with many other people. I gave him that choice -- "I can just pass all of this to you -- then I'll get to see a lot more movies [laughs] or you can share it and we'll do training." He wanted to share it. So this whole tribal world came through him as much as it did through me. I'm very happy, because we have wonderful teachers and incredible communities happening all over the world. And to have him there beside me while I go through all of this is...well...beyond words [laughs]. Thank God I dance! Jonathan, tell me about the WAVES workshop that you'll be presenting in Minneapolis. Horan: Really, the theme behind that workshop is about falling in love with being in your body again. To take your power back in terms of being able to look at the two different sides of yourself -- one being what we call the shadow, but which is the polarity to the 5 RhythmsTM. And to be able to completely accept that without judgment and begin to actively work with it so that whenever you fall from the purity of one rhythm, for instance, staccato, there's just pure clarity and connection and focus given to the tension and rigidity, whether that be in your mind or your body or your heart. That you see it, that you feel it, that you accept it, that you are willing to look at it and go through it and in that act, you transform it and don't get stuck anywhere. It's about just really learning how to be again, to be in your body, and the 5 RhythmsTM are an excellent map to the body's potential. Roth: Yes, I think the first level is just learning how to see the rhythms as a perspective, as a way to see all of life as just energy and motion. There is a philosophy that life is energy, energy is motion, motion is life -- it's all a dance. And it's a natural practice, like yoga or any other practice that you can take home and use to expand your movement vocabulary. I think in the beginning we're really interested in just having a good time. This other stuff comes up, which is why these other "maps" have been created out of the process. But in the beginning, you just move, and everything else unfolds. When Jonathon talks about the shadow, he's not talking in a Jungian sense. He's just saying there's another side to the Rhythms -- how we resist moving. When we actually get inside that resistance and move that resistance it becomes a dance. So we can begin to embrace all the parts of ourselves -- all of our energies, including our resistance to movement. Which I have a lot of, actually. Horan: Yeah, at almost every workshop I do, I walk in with some kind of tension about it, for one reason or another. Then as soon as I get there, as soon as I remember and feel the space and begin to move and feel that shift inside of myself, I always feel better. I always feel better at the end. Roth: People say this all the time, "I didn't think I could move today. I didn't think I could do anything, and now I feel tremendous." This is what happens when we just let that be and move through it. We come into a whole new level of energy. Jonathan Horan will present WAVES in Minneapolis on October 26, 27 & 28. Registration required. For more information, please contact Jami Shoemaker at jamis@mac.com or call (651) 645-1137. Jami Shoemaker lives in the Twin Cities, where she works as a writer and editor and pursues her love of theatre and dance. Copyright 2001 Jami Shoemaker |
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