Annual meeting JHV 2021
JHV again as a video conference and two online attunements
Every morning the world is reborn and brings us a time full of new opportunities.
Even if the difficulties are the same as yesterday, we can tackle them from scratch.
With these lines from David Steindl-Rast, Ulla Röber had invited to this year’s annual general meeting with the subsequent open workshop “Quint-Essence in Dance”. How accurate and up-to-date the statement of these two sentences is, became even more apparent when it became clear: As last year, the JHV 2021 can only take place online. The workshop that has been prepared by the four teachers Birgit Krauß, Daniela Siegrist, Lucia Großkopf-Müller and Uschi Strobel since summer 2019 is canceled for the second time!
So again a meeting via Zoom and instead of the two-day workshop the offer to participate in an attunement on the screen on Saturday and Sunday.
The alternative solution met with a surprisingly positive response: Over 30 people from 7 countries registered. On Friday evening 33 women came together for the attunement, 35 women each!
JHV 2021
After greeting and introducing the Sun dance -Music to listen to, watch or dance along, Heidi Hafen officially opened the annual meeting of the professional association. The focus was on the activity reports of the management team and the Balance editorial team. After Heidi, as the first chairwoman, had explained the activity report to everyone, Jeaneth de Witte, the second chairwoman, presented the work of the “New website project group” that she brought into being. What is new about the website is above all the opening to multilingualism and a modern design that enables new ways of information and communication. For example, non-German speaking members and subscribers will be able to read balance articles in their own language. In addition, teachers and dancers are invited to exchange ideas. The structure and the German version of the site are now largely in place. A conversation with Friedel Kloke-Eibl is planned to answer some of the questions. As soon as the project group and the board have agreed on the draft, the translation into Dutch and English begins.
TheBalance team reported on the adversities caused by the pandemic that made his work more difficult last year: the editorial team could only meet once live, everything else had to be done by telephone or in digital meetings. Creative processes depend on direct exchange – according to the painful experience of the editorial team and a résumé shared by the “New Website Project Group”. In addition, Schnitzerdruck had to file for bankruptcy. To the great regret of the team, the layouter Mr. Glöckler, who had been working together for many years, lost his job as a result. Negotiating and coming to terms with the successor company PAGEFactory meant additional efforts and extra work, especially for Ulla Röber. It is all the more remarkable that 2020 with Where I end and you begin and Distance two particularly inspiring and widely acclaimed booklets have emerged. Spontaneous comments from the members of the general meeting and an enthusiastic thank-you applause underlined this great achievement.
The report by the treasurer Ulla Röber and the cash auditors Barbara Meder and Uschi Strobel also confirmed a balanced budget for the 2020 financial year. The executive board was then unanimously discharged.
At the end, the participants thanked the team for their work and then exchanged open discussions with one another, including their experiences with digital formats. The initiative of the board to offer Friedel Kloke-Eibl’s lecture on the subject of the “Path of the Heart” twice as a zoom event was particularly praised.
The board team was pleased about the thanks from the members and feels encouraged to continue confidently – and that in the spirit of the lines by David Steindl-Rast quoted at the beginning …
The online attunements “quintessence”
“Tackle it all over again” was also the motto for the four teachers, who instead of the workshop now had to create the two attunements using zoom. They mastered the challenge, which was unfamiliar to everyone, with passion and bravado, the technical implementation as well as the content of the two units.
Daniela Siegrist invited the dancers, took over the moderation and explained the most important functions of the screen control to everyone at the beginning.
In turn, Birgit, Daniela, Lucia and Uschi gave the participants from Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland two unusual celebration hours with spiritual depth. Quintessence in dance. Dances and texts merged into a unity that almost made one forget that the four were not connected to each other and the circle of dancers in one room, but instead guided each other from their apartment and were virtually present in over thirty different places.
When the instructions changed from one to another, the following lecturer took up a thought from her predecessor about a dance or from a text and continued it by getting in the mood for the next dance. That made the transitions from place to place fluid. The reduction in the space shown by the camera also contributed to this. Everything that could distract the view was covered, the camera focused the voice and the movements of the lecturer, showed in the background a simple bouquet of flowers and a burning candle – suggestion of a common center.
According to the theme, the four had next to the meditation en croix Dances like Cupid Dei , Song of silence , Rooted, Star of venus , Stages, gradalis and Thanks dance chosen, supplemented by the gestures for Saskia Kloke’s dances contemplation and Sky wide. B.Both units sounded with the Spring serenade and welcomed a spring-like renewal (not only fitting the date).
The wish expressed at the beginning that the participants might succeed in imagining the circle and its energy and perceiving it in their hearts, was probably fulfilled for many. At the end, all moved in devotional silence – as if Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s quoted thought had been In being still there is a wonderful power of clarification, purification, and concentration on the essentials has just come true.
The response from the circle when we said goodbye was overwhelmingly positive: Great gratitude for a great job in every respect!
Like every online performance, it was not able to satisfy all of our longing for dancing together in a breathing circle, but still, whether dancing or watching, we could guess or feel its essence.
Ulrike Meister-Lucht
