Monday, February 23, 2009

Bread and Roses

I recently went to see Billy Elliott on Broadway. There is something about a Broadway show that always lifts my spirits and refocuses me as a spiritual being. Watching any arts performance—music, theater or dance—reconnects me with my Soul and forces me out of “little me” and into the bigger “I am/One Life” level of existence.

It was a profound experience watching an 11 year old boy sing, dance and act the part of a miner’s son who struggles to pursue his heart’s desire to become a ballet dancer. The backdrop of the play was the 1984 British mining strike that lasted a year before ending without any concessions from the State-owned mining industry. The miners’ struggle to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and community, is juxtaposed with Billy’s journey to move beyond these basic needs and to a level of existence where he can express his true nature through the arts.

The beauty of the play for me was the way the father, initially opposed to Billy becoming a dancer, finally understands that despite the fact that the family was in the midst of a strike, his son has a right to pursue his dream. As a parent, I related both to the miners and to Billy’s struggle. As a nation and a world, many of us are faced with challenging economic conditions. Like the miners, we don’t really know how it will all turn out, but like Billy we know we must pursue our dreams anyway. Somehow Billy knew that as Shakespeare said, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

As we move forward through these challenging times, let us not squelch the creative spark alive within us all. To quote the old labor song—“Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes; Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.”

Tami