Cristiam writing about his experience in Jerusalem excerpted from Introduction to Geometry of Balance Workbook
At the age of thirty-three, while on tour choreographing a musical, I found myself in Jerusalem shortly after the Six Day War. I wandered the ancient city, still lit only by candles, feeling acutely the charged atmosphere. I entered a temple looking for respite, but instead, for one brilliantly lit hour, I dwelt “inside of the heart of movement.” It was here that an extraordinary event dramatically changed my life and my perception of dance and movement.
When I first arrived in Israel I was touched by my perception of the conflict existing in the Middle East. Different cultures were living in close proximity to one another without being able to truly unite in a common desire for peace.
My most striking perception was the manner in which each culture was expressing their religious beliefs. I felt as if they were enveloped in a sense of longing for the reality of God, a reality that in that moment was failing to fulfill the essential desire of the human heart.
It was there as I was seated alone in a mosque in the old city of Jerusalem, that in a moment of frustration prompted by the pain that I was experiencing of the human condition I asked God: “why?” Why have so many thousands of years gone by and the promise of fulfillment remained still negated, always projected into a time yet to come. From the vivid remembrance of this question, I only recall the next moment within my awareness as I saw a reflection of light pouring into the center of the room from one of the windows.
I was being moved, as if transported into a merging with an all- involving spatial design that was showing me all of the possibilities of unity that existed within the geometry of three-dimensional space. I was inside of the Geometry of Balance experiencing for the first time the dance of life.
I was in the presence of ecstasy feeling how everything that surrounded me was made of the same energy that expressed a form of vibration/radiation that I could only call love. For the first time, my body was not willfully moving but was naturally propelled by the very breath that was my life. It was here that my love for freedom of movement was understood as being a natural merging with three-dimensional space. And I realized that my merging with three-dimensional space was also my engagement with a pure momentum, not of my making, that was the result of my sense of unity within all things.
I cannot tell you how long I was inside this beautiful experience, but what I can surely say is that I learned in those precious moments the meaning of the exaltation that was my essential desire to express movement and dance. As I experienced greater and greater degrees of energy and love I became suddenly self-conscious, thinking that I could no longer withstand the extraordinary energy that I was experiencing. With this thought then, I witnessed how the geometrical patterns of movement existing in three-dimensional space that were enveloping me in freedom of movement were now gradually contracting back into my body. As this was occurring I recognized that out of fear I was contracting back into physical boundaries, realizing that after my experience of freedom, I was becoming imprisoned into my old, familiar sense of self.
Later, as I tried to make sense of this experience, I realized that even though I did not fully understand what had just happened to me, what I am sure of was that I had been given an extraordinary gift. This was the gift that was allowing me to make sense of my childhood experience of not being able to walk, making sense of my desire to fully experience the freedom inherent in physical movement, and above all assisting me to understand the force that has impelled me through all these years to learn and experience the many forms of movement existing within the world of dance. I had asked for the experience of freedom and now knew that freedom had been shown to me.