DANCING THROUGH LIFE

WORDS / SUMMER EL-SHAHAWY

PHOTO / LAUREN RAE

Lela Besom is a dancer and the creative spark behind Explorative Dance Love, a community for dance and performance Besom created where people can come together and use dance as a way of personal exploration and expression. EDL welcomes people of all backgrounds, orientations and identities, and Besom said her mission is to provide an outlet for the human experience and create community central to dance.

Besom said she grew up with somewhat quirky parents in a conservative society that didn’t match her progressive pattern of thought. As an only child, she was fortunate to travel and learned to observe and appreciate the creative spark in the world and within herself. For Besom, that spark is dancing.

“I’m pretty sure I came out dancing,” Besom said. “My mom said in utero I would kick rhythmically for long periods of time. I’m not sure if that was me dancing or protesting or if there is a difference.”

After studying visual arts at the University of Kansas, Besom turned her focus to practicing zen meditation on a semi-monastic schedule at the Cambridge Zen Center in Massachusetts. After three years, she moved to Seattle where she began her involvement with DAIPANbutoh Collective dancing butoh, a type of Japanese theatrical dance that focuses on precise control of movement.

Besom said she moved to Fayetteville to “Kon Mari,” inspired by Marie Kondo’s, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” Being in Fayetteville has allowed Besom to challenge herself as an artist while also being close to her family.

Besom said that dancing means a number of things to her, depending on where she focuses her attention. This February she was invited by artist Guadalupe Anaya to Guerrero Negro, Mexico, to dance butoh and write poetry for the whales that gather there each year.

Anaya’s organization, Stultifera Navis Institutom, does artistic creative work as well as scientifi c research and has received support from la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. “Right now for me dancing is building relationships, strengthening connections, challenging myself, bringing attention and reverence to beings who are subject to the ill decisions of humans,” Besom said. “It’s putting myself in a space of awe, learning from and relating to whales, making a childhood dream come true, expanding consciousness, and sharing and taking action for positive change.”

In her work at EDL, Besom helps people challenge themselves and allow for uncertainty.

“I want to offer what I didn’t have growing up: a kind of crazy awesome creative dance community and experience that appreciates the depths of what it is to be human, and provide an art form that can help anyone live their life with more freedom, awareness, creativity, confidence, and actualization.”