SPIRITO MANIFESTO
THE LIVING EARTH
TO LIVE IN THE MOMENT
Artistic Director
Cheryl Flaharty
Dancer
Jonelle Layfield
Costume and Set Design
Cheryl Flaharty
Lighting
Janine Myers
Production Assistant
Lynn Maire Sager
Stage Manager
Barett Hoover
Video Editing
Izumi Designs
Creative Team - Costumes & Sets
Cheryl Flaharty, Rebecca Horne, Dee Kursat, Carlyn Wolfe, Lindsey Shannon, Geneva Rivera, Peggy Hill, Rose Wolfe.
Supported by the Hawai`i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawai`i or grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cades Foundation, and Jean Rolles.
ABOUT THE SHOW
‘The Living Earth’ was presented in 2009 as the fifth interactive production of IONA’s diverse Salon Series. Staged at Honolulu Hale’s Sky Gate Sculpture designed by Isamu Noguchi, 'The Living Earth' wove together dance and spirituality to present a theatrical dialogue of universal concerns. The interactive performance revolved around a Cosmic Circus featuring a Living Altar of sacred statues that brought the audience through the chakras as the evening progressed. Surrounding the Circus were nine Gates of Earth Awareness performance tents designed to honor and bring awareness to the current state of the planet and human consciousness. Prior to the show, audience members chose their individual “fate,” or order in which they watched the performance evolve as they visited each of the nine Gates.
ABOUT THE PRESENT MOMENT
Being in the moment means being mindfully aware of what is going on right here and now, in our experience, and this includes any thinking we do about the past or future. Much of the time our experience does not have this quality of awareness or mindfulness. A lot of the time we are like robots, automatically living out habitual patterns of self-pity, anger, wish fulfillment, fear, etc. These habitual tendencies take us over and run our lives for us – without our being able to stand back and decide whether this is what we actually want to be doing. It can be a real shock when we start to realize just how habitual and automatic our lives are, and when we realize how much runaway thinking leads to states of suffering.
Being in the moment is just another way of saying that we are aware of what is going on in our experience; that we are not just being angry (or whatever) but are aware that we are angry and know we can choose to be otherwise. Of course a lot of the time when we are not being in the moment, we are literally thinking about the past or future. How often have you eaten a meal and not really tasted it, or completed a chore or drove to work without really thinking about it?
Our days often pass us by while our minds are elsewhere. This present moment connection can help us to manifest our goals and dreams, and take action in the now.
