An Eastern-inspired teacher once taught me that a mandala is an illustration of one’s universe, with each ring depicting a different layer of one’s being—one’s place within his or her environment. So, when I sat down with my colored pencils to sketch my own mandala, naturally I created swirling images of a high school student’s life in suburban New Jersey. As sweet and as lovely as my drawing was, I must say that I like Murray Spalding’s interpretation of the concept much better. The renowned choreographer said that a mandala, simply put, is a sacred circle. It’s a tool for meditation, a beautifully dizzying means to a trancelike state. And that’s exactly what happened to me while watching thisiswater and the Murray Spalding Moving Arts, Inc.’s production of XII: A Celebration of the Life & Work of Murray Spalding. My mind and body slipped into serenity.
This past November, Ms. Spalding passed away due to complications with cancer. As a woman known for her sprightly spirit, 66 years was not enough time for her is this world. She had so much more to do, so much joy and art to share with her family and friends, colleagues and admirers. On May 27th and 28th, director Leslie Roybal presented a compilation of Spalding’s twelve mandalas, looping them together to form one, sweeping cycle. Light on aerobatics, the mandalas are “down to earth” dances, with the seven women acting as serpentines, scissoring into formation, tracing the footfalls of one another. Each mandala is characterized by a different shape—a triangle, for example, or a figure-8—but, ultimately, the shapes dissolve, ebbing back into the continuum of a circle.
It’s consoling, isn’t it—something being seamless and unending? Certainly, the mandalas of Spalding, Roybal, and the Hindu and Buddhist ascetics before them aren’t the only people to have found solace in the forever of a circle. The Celts hammered metals into knots to symbolize eternity. Whoever invented the first mechanical clock, made it round so that people would know that time would keep on ticking. The wedding ring, a wreath of flowers on a grave—we use circles every day to let others know that we will always be there, in one way or another, and that they will never be forgotten. It’s a symbol of love, hope, and—more than that—it’s a symbol of life.
And when you look at it that way, XII isn’t just a tribute reel of Spalding’s most celebrated works. Rather, by keeping her mandalas in motion, the dancers are keeping Spalding alive. Swathed in the vibrant hue of scarlet, they weave about the floor, but it seems as if they are not moving by their own accord. Rather, they have been captured—by a riptide, or perhaps even Spalding herself. If it’s true, that Spalding is the greater power here—the maestro of their movements—then it is her energy that they harness when they curl their palms around their abdomens, nurturing her presence in the cores of their own being. She is there, amongst the audience, and we are meditating with her—as one.
Today, if I were handed a bundle of colored pencils, yes, I could doodle a skyline etched out of soaring buildings and church spires—a rainbow version of my adult, New York universe. Or, I could get up and move, propelled by my own intuition, modeled on nothing that had been built by anyone else. I don’t know if Murray Spalding was at all intrigued by psychological theory, but I have a feeling that she may have been. Carl Jung created his own mandalas, and he encouraged his patients to do the same. He believed that they could reveal one’s unconscious. Spalding said something similar: “The conscious, and especially the unconscious mind,” she explained, “is always at work, interpreting and directing.” And isn’t something that’s constantly working—incessantly ticking—better portrayed in motion? By dancing Spalding’s mandalas, the choreographer will continue to direct, only we will be the ones to interpret.
XII: A Celebration of the Life & Work of Murray Spalding was featured at Danspace Project on May 27th and May 28th, 2011.
