bee SEEK her

 This is my third bee dance, dancing with 12,000 honeybees. In this dance I invited friends to improvise with the Bee Queen. It was amazing how many emotions buzzed up and around during the dance, how much magic was presented. The video took its own turns and twists as it was edited down to create a surprising unfolding. I wrote the text after editing a sort of story out of the video improvisations. It gathered a momentum of a fierce intention to awaken a call to action. Seize this precious moment of beauty and glory by noticing what’s happening around us each day, each year. Things are changing so fast globally and locally that we are having a hard time catching our breaths and double-checking our impact. At first my intention was to show the gorgeous clarity and subtlest of nature, but by the end of editing I felt the message clear. We need to step back, examine what we are doing to the planet and its species for the safe survival of us all. Beauty is inherent in our ability to let nature fruit, to nurture it, and to support it, not destroy it. Please take a look around and see how you can help us all by just doing simple things such as recycling, buy whole foods and conserving natural resources. Please plant gardens and flowers for the bees, buy local foods when you can and support your local natural beekeepers. Bees also love a bowl of water with large rocks that act as islands during the hot summer months. So go outside and plant your surroundings for the future of us all. I think of Bee Dance as a duet and communion between species. The bees push with their powerful wings from each side of my body, I resist and then I let go and flow and move with them. It is a deep meditation and I feel the hive mind surround me, hold me, and expand my body on a cellular level. The bottom "row" of bees pinches my skin to stay on my body, which at first feels like sting. They are mighty strong and sensitive creatures. I am a healer, dancer, artist, builder of structures and beekeeper. As a beekeeper my partner and I hope to help the bees of the northwest by encouraging them to swarm and become hardy to the ever changing environment and we leave them be. Insects can evolve much faster than slow breading humans if we let them swarm and divide and encourage the stronger hives to populate our ecosystem. If we keep medicating and treating them with insecticide and stealing all the honey and then feeding them sugar or corn syrup and/or artificially inseminating the queen we will continue to degrade the genetics of the bee population. Find grace and gentleness with each other. Use the idea of the hive mind to create links between cultures and groups. Dance more. Enjoy the sweetness that is our world. The bees give us more than honey and we can give back to them in equal partnership.