ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE EDITION No5 'ALCHEMY' | Page 28

The next stage (the bit we all instinctively adore, let’s remember!), is when
that forward push becomes unsustainable, and the wave breaks.

If it’s a big wave,
the crash is huge.
Awe.
Inspiring.
Mighty.
Orgasmic even.

Giant wave, Source © http://21stcenturyasianarmsrace.com/

What if the wave was so huge it had been building for many
thousands of years? How mighty and magnificent would the crash
be then?
More on that later.

After the breaking stage, there’s a wonderful rush of foaming movement
that’s incredibly complex, and actually if you look at it in detail you’ll see
thousands of miniature waves all tumbling and falling over each other in

playful enthusiasm, and all of it full of untold numbers of bubbles.
Delightful.
Then there’s a smooth tongue of water rushing up the sand as far as it can go
before sinking back into the mother it came from, like a last breath, in and out,
then gone. Now, these five stages of a breaking wave are exactly what we
practice when we dance the rhythms.
But it wasn’t that Gabrielle Roth, the founder, watched waves on the ocean
and thought ‘wouldn’t that make a cool movement practice’. No, she watched
people dancing, and saw those same patterns in human motion. In fact
to be specific, she watched the people who looked really free, uninhibited and
natural, studying how they moved. She saw that left to themselves, their
movements would start gentle and flowing, then grow to be more percussive,
fiery and staccato, then break loose, getting very chaotic and cathartic, then
become more playful and lyrical, ending peaceful and still, before another wave

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