Flair

D'Empress, Contributor

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with the talented artist, Antonio Lyons. He was explaining his love for dance and how it becomes a meditation space for him to explore, express and to breathe in life - deeply.

He's a poet and actor, and over the past few years, Antonio has evolved his artistic gifts to hone a vocal prowess which envelopes all of his artistic genius. He is so serious about dance as his spiritual anchor that, this September, he's launching his new album titled, We Dance, We Pray ... hmmn, foot-tapping food for thought?

A few hours later, while having tea with girlfriends, I relived a similar dance-induced high as experienced at the Goddess Play Party I hosted in August.

As we sat by a gently flowing river, we gathered as flowering goddesses to explore and affirm our femininity. That was the call! The Goddess Play Party is an invitation to access African female heritage and traditions through waist- beads. The African waist bead tradition is powerful.

As I passed around baskets of gorgeous waist beads of all colours and sizes the touch fired imagination and dreams in the goddess circle. Imagination in dream-space merged with deeply anchored visions in soul-space to here and now, real-time expressions of womanity.

The 'love-for-me-as-woman' passion sparked by rich thoughts of adornment in waist beads, rapidly propelled the flowering goddesses at the play party into what my dear matriarch, Adele, calls, heart-space.

Matriarch Adele has taught me how, when we are able to play from heart-space, the scent of the blossoming goddess within is infectious. Like bees to honey, when we play more often from heart-space, we attract joy, we climb mountains effortlessly, we knit the fabric of our innermost desires.

Feminine expression

Hers is ancient women's wisdom offered as modern wisdom keys for our feminine expression in contemporary life today! Mine is to share it!

As the story unfolded, I could see that my tea guests were hooked! No alcohol, no sex, no men, such power? Intoxicated, they wanted to know more!

I went on to share how most women were touching waist beads for the first time in their lives. I remember how faces lit up in excitement as the flowering goddesses realised that no matter their cultural origin, the potent string of colourful beads, could become a part of their sensual artillery.

Back at the Goddess Play Party, I turned up the heat as the flowering goddesses were given metre-long cloths to tie around their hips, and with a shaker in hand, I invited them into the chakacha circle.

The chakacha circle feels much like the delicious space of freedom and expression that sparks in Antonio's eyes when he speaks of the sanctuary space he enters as he dances.

As I led the chakacha circle in foot-tapping rhythm embellished by voice and shaking, we began rolling and snaking our hips.

The ancient East African tradition of the woman-to-woman sensuous dancing rituals - the chakacha, now reversion in 2010 for flowering goddesses at play parties is a heady heart-space cocktail. As we invoked spirit-filled joy of our great-grandmothers and the lineage that walked before them, we all said yes!

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