| A Movement Teacher in the Jungle of Calais - part II Stacey Butcher interviewed by Corrine Julve
by admin, 9th June 2024
Stacey Butcher is an Open Floor teacher based in Asheville, North Carolina in the United States, a 5Rhythms teacher (trained by Gabrielle Roth), as well as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.
Stacey on the first day as they tried to encourage people to dance. A big "yes" in her body Liz organized the whole thing, so Stacey would not have gone there if it weren’t for Liz telling her about it. She was already flying from the United States to Europe to teach a workshop in Findhorn (Scotland), so it was just a matter of changing some dates and some tickets and off she went. Stacey hadn’t heard of the Jungle of Calais before, but she just felt a big “yes” in her body when Liz talked about the project. Before her involvement in conscious dance, Stacey was a traveler and spent years traveling all over the world in under-developed countries - Africa, the Middle East, etc. Not that there weren’t any fears or doubts, but Stacey appears to be someone who can overcome her fears and step outside her comfort zone. (And by the way she teaches a workshop called “What are you waiting for?”) Upon arriving, she remembers being surprised that the refugees had actually built a whole village, a small town even, with some little kiosks selling things, a small library, and restaurants. There was even a legal advice center and a women’s center that had been set up by outside organizations. She remembers not seeing many women at all around apart from the volunteers. Stacey, Liz and a few volunteers from the Good Chance Theatre (where they taught) ate at an Afghani “restaurant” in the camp. She remembered a little area inside there with Afghani carpets and men hanging out charging their cell phones. The very wise 18-year-old volunteer shared with them about the camp. She told them the camp had various “neighborhoods” specific to different countries – Afghanistan, Ethiopia, etc. Stacey realized that many of the people in the Jungle were not just people who had nothing, but also people who had successful lives and careers, and possessions and had been forced to leave it all behind.
One of the “stores” in the Jungle. Teaching was not an easy task. The first day was mostly people standing around looking at them with this “What are you doing here?” sort of look on their faces, and others were very welcoming. She remembers thinking “this is not about teaching a curriculum, but more about bringing the people together, creating unity”. Even when the dome was filled with men (there were never any women) just standing around the edges watching and not dancing, they at least got everyone to clap their hands in unity to the music. Learning from them They asked the people what kind of music they wanted to hear. They asked for this one particular pop song (she has forgotten its title, but thinks it was an Afghani song). The people there kept asking them to play it again and again and again, which they did. On the 2nd day, instead of teaching them, Liz and Stacey asked the men to teach them their dances. This was the way they really got everyone moving. Stacey and Liz joined them. It was a lot of jumping and turning around in circles and Stacey remembers getting quite dizzy, but enjoyed the sense of belonging.
Liz doing the traditional dance the men taught them. One day they were told that people may be on edge, as the police were marking structures with a big red X to signify those that will be bulldozed soon. She saw people literally picking up and moving little houses from one area to another to avoid being bulldozed. Sadly, the entire camp was eventually bulldozed down to nothing not long after Stacey and Liz left there. She remembers how when she said, “see you tomorrow” at night, they would often answer: “No, tomorrow I’ll be on the other side of the Channel”, as though England was the new promised Land. But they were still in the Jungle the next day. She remembers going back to town in the evening and having dinner with Liz feeling how these two realities were so many worlds apart and yet so close in physical proximity, only about a 15-ish minute drive from each other. They were both quite struck by this and had some good cries about it. She regrets not having spent some time in the camp before teaching, doing whatever needed to be done there, and establishing at least some level of trust with the people there and getting to know them. At the end of their stay, one of the volunteers said, “if you leave with nothing else, know that you got men from four different cultures dancing together.” She had never seen that happen before. Here’s a beautiful video Liz Gleeson created from their time in the ‘Jungle of Calais’. To find out more about Stacey’s work, please visit: www.StaceyButcher.com |
