It’s hummingbird time!
Amira’s belly dancers and friends are creating a charm of hummingbirds that will join the joyous, creative energy of Olympia’s 2025 Procession of the Species. Accompanied by Sticks & Bones Marching Band, our dancing flock will surely make hearts go all a-flutter! Read on for more details on how to participate and support this shimmering endeavor. And thank you!
Why a charm of hummingbirds?
Last year, we had the wonderful adventure of joining the Procession as the Great Dancing Kelp Forest. This year, I wanted to do something different, and the universe kept telling me it needed to be hummingbirds. The hummingbird is known as the bird of joy and they are truly magical. Did you know their hearts beat 500 to 1,200 beats per minute?!
Here's a passage from a beautiful story that explores hearts of all sizes...
Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.
From "Joyas Valadoras" by Brian Doyle - you can hear a narrated version on Selected Shorts.
What a wonderful creature to celebrate, right? And the fact that a flock of hummingbirds is called a "charm" makes it all the more perfect for a group of belly dancers. Let's bring joy to the streets of Olympia!