Category: movement rituals

A Sijo Poem for the Winter Solstice

JoAnne Tucker / / movement rituals, Personal Life, Poetry

I was introduced to the Korean sijo in a recent poetry class I took.   The teacher mentioned it along with haiku and invited us to explore one of the forms.  Since I spent some time last year writing haiku and creating watercolors to accompany text, I was intrigued to delve into this new form I was hearing about for the first time.

What is sijo?  The Poetry Foundation provides a place to start:

A Korean verse form related to haiku and tanka and comprised of three lines of 14-16 syllables each, for a total of 44-46 syllables. Each line contains a pause near the middle, similar to a caesura, though the break need not be metrical. The first half of the line contains six to nine syllables; the second half should contain no fewer than five.

While the form is not as well-known as haiku, a little more research found some treasured classics translated into the English.  This one by Yun Seon Do (1587 – 1671) particularly caught my attention.

You ask how many friends I have? Water and stone, bamboo and pine,
The moon rising over the eastern hill is a joyful comrade.
Besides these five companions, what other pleasure should I ask?

There are regular writing contests for haiku and groups that meet in both the United States and Japan writing and sharing haiku.  There is not as much activity happening with sijo although I did discover that the Sejong Cultural Society has a writing competition.  The Sejong Cultural Society’s purpose is to “advance awareness and understanding of Korea’s cultural heritage among people in the United States by reaching out to the younger generation through contemporary creative and fine arts.”

In the past few weeks I have written several sijo.  I liked the fact that sijo were often shared as songs, sometimes with drum accompaniment.  Soon I was thinking of simple choreography that might fit one of the poems I had written.  Why not explore writing sijo and creating dance movements to accompany the words?  I had fun doing just that.

This sijo is for the winter solstice.

 December darkness descends: fewer hours of sunlight.

Energy emerges from friendships — reach out to each other —

Recognize your inner light: open your heart with joyful love!

And here is a link where you can see the movement.  I invite you to do the simple movement with me.  https://vimeo.com/895910726

When I shared my sijo and movement with the poetry class, one of the members asked if she might share it with her church group.  I was very touched by the request, and that was part of my motivation for figuring out how to video it to share with others.

When I was working with haiku, I created over thirty haiku with watercolor illustration and selected some to share online in this blog.  https://mostlydance.com/2023/03/24/an-experiment-writing-haiku-with-accompanying-watercolor/   While I haven’t decided yet whether to create a series of sijo with accompanying movement, I am intrigued by the idea.

In Costa Rica, being so close to the equator, we only experience a small change in the balance of light and dark each day.  This particular year I am feeling the darkness more.  Let’s light candles and call forth our inner light to remind ourselves that each day after the winter solstice there will be a bit more light. 

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Rituals Acknowledging the Directions – Native American Tradition and Jewish Sukkot

JoAnne Tucker / / Art, movement rituals, New York Company

Just a few weeks ago we opened A Day of Action Against Domestic Violence in Santa Fe, with a Native American acknowledgement and blessing.  It was a ritual to acknowledge that we, here in Santa Fe, are living on Tewa Ground. Tewa refers to the language spoken by the six pueblos located adjacent to the Rio Grande River in Central and North Central New Mexico. All attending were invited outdoors, and Teresa Candelario, a member of the Yaqui Tribe from California, blew the conch in all six directions as we gathered into a circle.  She acknowledged each direction, traditionally done by facing east first, then south, continuing west, north, above and below.  It was a powerful way to start our day, and that evening when I got home I found myself reflecting on the ceremony and remembering a project with The Avodah Dance Ensemble that goes back some twenty-three years.

In the fall of 1996 I explored with two outstanding Native American actresses/dancers/directors a project exploring Native American rituals, particularly related to direction and the shaking of the lulav and etrog as part of Sukkot.  The two women, Muriel Miguel and Murielle Borst-Tarrant are mother and daughter and members of the Kuna and Rappannock nations.  Muriel Miguel is the founder and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theatre, the longest running Native American women’s theater company in North America.  She also has a strong modern dance background having studied with Alvin Nickolai, Erick Hawkins and Jean Erdman.  Her daughter Murielle Borst-Tarrant is a playwright, performer and director. 

Working with the two women and Avodah company members Elizabeth McPherson and Beth Millstein we began exploring the use of directions in Native American tradition and in the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.  While we did several informal performances and workshops it remained a “work in progress” and was never fully realized as a dance/theatre piece.

What stands out most in my mind from the experience was how we began each rehearsal.  Muriel Miguel shared with us that they always began rehearsals or performances by calling their ancestors into the space with them.  It was a way of protecting the working space. They welcomed us to face each of the four directions and invite whoever came to mind to protect and join us on this creative journey.  I found this most interesting and actually very potent. I was a bit surprised who came to mind.  Sometimes I welcomed a grandparent, a childhood rabbi that had died, an outstanding creative artist from our dance tradition or a biblical character into the rehearsal room with me. We did this each time we had rehearsal and sometimes it was the same ancestors who joined me and sometimes it was someone new and different. At the end of the rehearsal it was important to thank them for helping us, and let them go.

Several years later I was leading a workshop at Hebrew Union College and invited the participants to face each direction and welcome their ancestors into the session. I did the exercise too and when I finished and came back to my place in the circle I had the most surprising feeling that the room was suddenly very crowded with lots of people I had never met.  The next day I happened to run into one of the rabbis on the HUC faculty who commented that he had looked in the chapel where we were dancing the previous day and the room felt so full and crowded.  Humm… I  thought about the exercise we had done the day before but felt it was wise just to agree with him without saying anything else!!!

At another workshop when we were dancing Exodus 15:20 “and all the women went out after [Miriam] in dance with timbrels,”  I asked the participants to become the women going out after Miriam, but to replace Miriam in their imaginations with whomever they were following in their own lives. This proved to be insightful and another variation of acknowledging our ancestors as we had done with Muriel and Murielle!

It is interesting to note that on each night of Sukkot it is a custom to invite “invisible guests” into the Sukkah along with “visible ones.”  Usually this meant biblical characters.  

Another Sukkot custom that seems to have a parallel with Native American tradition is to include a prayer for rain as part of the last day ritual of carrying the lulav and etrog.

Part of the beauty of Sukkot in many places is to be out among the changing leaves.  So I have selected as the visual for this blog a fall leaf pastel painting that I did.  

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