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I’ve been getting ready for a show this Saturday at The Soma Center in Highland Park, NJ, very much in my old stomping grounds near Rutgers University. I really like how Jessica sounds on vocals and viola. I think we have a good combo in sound and personality. This past Friday we played a mini house concert that served as a good dressed rehearsal for this weekend’s show. I didn’t feel quite ready to play one of the songs from the new material I’ve been writing, but I definitely want to get “Everybody Does the Best They Can” on Saturday’s playlist. Songs always feel like works in progress for a while after I start letting them out into the world, anyway. I do think they have to be let out in order to grow into their strongest form. Saturday will be a 2-for-1; after the concert will be Bhakti Dance! – an event I have been creating over the past year in Pennsylvania and in Ohio. I am hoping for a good “hometown” crowd for it this time. All this should feel more or less like part of the usual program; even better in a place where I am most at ease. It is actually a bit more complex at the moment, though thankfully not profoundly so – at least not anymore. 2014 has been a very weird year. I won’t write a book about it here, but suffice it to say that this year I found myself in close proximity with some practices and beliefs that were very off-putting (That would be somewhat of an understatement.). It was being called yoga, and it looked like yoga. I suppose it is yoga of a sort, but not one with which I care to interface. I can’t claim to know the inner life of anyone else, but it seemed to be a yoga of doctrine over discovery. It was clearly of mind over heart – a kind of academic belief in interconnectedness, but profoundly lacking in compassion. I could go on, but there is no need. There has been so much more to the journey than this, but one of the effects of opening my intimate circle to this bizarre detour has been to have to question all, to move through a real, but thankfully temporary fear of yoga and spiritual practice in general. I have had to rediscover for myself what these things are and what parts of them, if any, I want in my life. It has generally not been a good feeling, but it surely is powerful to tear everything down (or to have it torn down) to rebuild what is good and what matters. For a while, I wasn’t sure if I could go back to the part of my world that has been about facilitating kirtan and other yoga-related practices. Thanks to the help of genuine friends and my own journey through these months of decompression, reading, and sorting out what is helpful and for the highest good and what just isn’t, I have been teasing out and rediscovering all the elements of a contemplative, spiritual way of being that do resonate: Balance and integration are everything. Knowing and feeling the value of all beings is truth. The yoga that guides me and that is my daily way is doing the work of growth and finding the perfection in the messiness of real, everyday life, not in the aloof or abstract, but the embodied. Yoga is nothing if not about getting to the heart of love. I am relieved and quietly joyful to get back to my own daily meditation practice and my writing. The concert and Bhakti Dance will be so much fun on Saturday. I am glad to say it will come from a genuine place of opening to joy and enjoyment, finally unafraid. 
Saturday, December 6th 6:30pm Soma Center *concert and Bhakti Dance! 511 Raritan Ave, Highland Park, NJ 08904 732-777-9642 w/ singer/violist Jessica Floresta Concert performance 6:30-8pm Bhakti Dance! 8:30-10pm $12/either event, $20/the evening Bhakti Dance! is a fun, transformative, alternative social event – Think of the high school dance only with great kirtan, mantra dance music, an uplifting party playlist, and none of the drama. Refreshments available.
I am planning my eclectic summer – feeling like it’s going to be a good one. Bhakti Dance! is on Saturday –It is one of the events I look most forward to these days. Dancing, in general, continues to save my life. My new partner is completely immersed in salsa and African dance – Maybe this New Wave chick will be learning some new moves.
Earlier this season, I was getting traveler’s blues in such an intense way. I didn’t have any major plans for a tour but I was seriously missing being on the road and started dreaming of taking a summer or fall cross-country drive. I was especially missing my friend Carol in Kansas City, and lo & behold, she wrote to see if I am coming out that way this year. No official plans yet, but with another call in for a potential show in Corvallis, OR (I won’t jinx it by saying more), I can start to envision something exciting coming together for this year.
Some of the usual fun stuff is on the horizon, with treks to Ohio for kirtan and DEVOlved bluegrass with the Mutant Mountain Boys. Before then, I’ll be happy to be part of the Hub City Music Festival again. Val at Rainbows of Healing has set up some more kirtan in the venues she works with in PA, and I feel good about keeping Bhakti Dance! going as a regular thing. Looks like I may head up to MA as well – Where is my teleportation device?
I still don’t know if this year will look like a tour or a bunch of excursions, but it is sure looking like I’ll be back in motion before too long. Want to help me in my travels? If you have or know of a venue, concert series, or alternative space that will host a concert, kirtan, or other event for this summer, the rest of 2014 and beyond, please do let me know ASAP: bookings@robinrenee.com. The schedule will be growing, and I’d love to add your city to it.
Saturday, March 15th 7-9pm 1/$15, 2/$20
Bhakti Dance!
YogaLove
10 N. Main Street, 3rd Fl.
Yardley, PA 19067
For more info: http://rainbowsofhealing.com/bhakti-dance/, About YogaLove: www.LiveYogaLoveLife.com
Come out on a Saturday night for a little bit of chanting and a whole lot of free form movement. Bhakti Dance! is a fun, transformative, alternative social event – Think of the high school dance only with great kirtan, mantra dance music, an uplifting party playlist, and none of the drama! Snacks and drinks will be available for purchase.
Friday, March 28th 7-8:30pm $10 suggested donation
YogaLove
*kirtan
10 N. Main Street, 3rd Fl.
Yardley, PA 19067
For more info: http://rainbowsofhealing.com/kirtan-with-robin-renee/, About YogaLove: www.LiveYogaLoveLife.com
Wednesday, April 9th 6:30pm
Hub City Music Festival
Crossroads Theater
*concert
7 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
w/ Sounds of Greg D, Adam Bernstein, and Barbecue Bob
benefits Elijah’s Promise
Sunday, April 27th 4:30-5:30pm
The Peace Center
*kirtan
102 West Maple Ave, Langhorne, PA 19047
July 1-6
17X-Day @ Wisteria Campground
w/ The Mutant Mountain Boys!
Pomeroy, OH
*performance date/time and more info TBA
Saturday, August 16th
DEVOtional 2014
w/ The Mutant Mountain Boys!
Beachland Ballroom
15711 Waterloo, Cleveland, OH 44110
*more info TBA
Saturday night was the second Bhakti Dance! at YogaLove in Yardley, PA. I am so glad the Bhakti Dance! idea came into focus at the end of 2013. Here is the way I’ve been describing it:
Come out on a Saturday night for a little bit of chanting and a whole lot of freeform movement. Bhakti Dance! is a fun, transformative, alternative social event – Think of the high school dance only with great kirtan, mantra dance music, an uplifting party playlist, and none of the drama.
We started out with about half an hour of chanting. I felt as though we sang just enough to become present in the room and in the event we were creating together. Then came the lights and the time to move. Transforming a yoga studio into a dance club is so satisfying and joyful! It is a good thing to have happened upon a truly natural expression of the connection I find between music and spirit. In the past I’ve had trouble creating the right balance in chant/performance spaces to reflect this. I’ve had trouble saying it in words. In the midst of dance, there is no need for words.
Val from Rainbows of Healing has been liaison for the event with the YogaLove space and has helped so much with her overall enthusiasm to make cool things happen. I love the look on her face when she hears the first notes of a back-in-the-day song and dives into the dance. Julio and Jana drove from NYC to join us, and were a total trip with their in-step dance moves and exuberance. Jane brought bindis and made everyone extra sparkly. Whenever I felt the urge to redirect the energy, thinking that people weren’t “getting it” or were heading toward boredom, I looked again and noticed they were dancing in their individual moments. I saw people keeping to themselves a good deal of the time and realized it as an indicator of deepening into the experience. There was also plenty of interaction – smiling, spontaneous rumba, clapping, random happy shouting. I’d planned to resolve the evening with “Shivo Ham,” but singing the Om Shanti together on “Holy River” turned out to be just right instead.
Creating Bhakti Dance! is feeling so amazingly good and it gives me encouragement to keep moving toward the singer/songwriter/rock performance meets chant meets dance party blowout creations I’ve been envisioning for a long time. My 2013 New Year’s resolution was “more dancing and more glitter.” It may sound silly and playful, and it is those things. It also turns out to have been more moving an intention than I could have guessed. I’ll keep it around this year. More song and dance and glitter all around!
A few tunes from Bhakti Dance! 1/18/14:
It’s time to see about taking Bhakti Dance! on the road. If you’d like to schedule one, get in touch at bookings@robinrenee.com.
New Year / New Order – 1/4/13
Dancer’s invisible hand, this time
did not push me to the platform
No particular synth rhythm
persuaded
Already,
tonight is motion, sex
and flash
shiny with silver fleck sequins
‘wish you cud see the glitter’
she teased
the ones not here
and now
Friday night
on stage, suddenly
leading pristine, sweaty, t-shirt, gender bent ball gown crowd
in a chorus of electric
groove
she joins me
hips hair arms miming the instinctual
undulation
I pretend not to see DJ’s camera
capturing spectacle
I pose
breathe
remember music-love-desire
as saving grace
She is taller than I
I wait for kisses
lean up
to take them
we draw a small crowd
of admirers – I know the beauty
is in every face mid-lyric
with favorite song
in silver-painted spikes
in blue luminescence
in every joyous dance floor grind
as much beauty here
as on renunciate mountaintop
The ego
and the living-the-moment
make desperate, impossible love
right here, in public
just below the balcony
until which is which, a memory
for armchair gurus.
I was ordained by sound before the womb
into the Order of Bodylight
Dance trance rishi has spoken
and this is my mantra.
♪ I know, you know, we believe in a land of love
I know, you know, we believe in a land of love ♫
Too-drunk chick yells above edgy guitar thump
“YOU… are a PARTY girl… and I DON’T take that LIGHTly!”
Satori.
Nor do I.
The Dream Between 