I GO! | Edition 31: Presence is Sensuality

This week: London – Brussels

Someone this week asked me if I feel nervous before coming on stage.
And I had to think for a moment. I don’t, much, anymore (often feel terribly excited!) - or just enough to keep me fully engaged and focused on the task ahead. It took me years of practice to realise that creating a connection with the audience requires surrender - abandoning yourself to the here and now, and using your body, your senses, your vital energy, as much as your intellect to create that special moment.

And you know what presence on stage looks like?
This 👇🏻

Grace Jones.

Crew cut. Sharply tailored Armani suit. Trademark razor-sharp cheekbones.
Standing alone, in front of strangers, for minutes before the song starts.
Looking like she owns the place.
Oozing sensuality and femininity.

Not the sweet type. Sculptural. Feral. Divine.

A French classic - La Vie en Rose - deconstructed. Elongated.
A woman in love.
With someone? Possibly.
Maybe with love itself.

Unpredictable. Untameable. Magnetic.
Iconoclastic.

Part theatre, part total authenticity - her performance is completely immersed in the here and now, vibrating with emotion.

Because presence requires deep sensuality.
All senses alert.

You feel the temperature of the room, the rhythm of breath, the pulse of silence between words. The nervous feet tapping, the shuffling on the carpet. You listen not just with your ears, but with your skin.

That’s where charisma lives - in the full inhabiting of yourself.

Grace Jones understood that.
She was performance and truth.
Precision and abandon.

A force that refused to be reduced to comfort or conformity.

Sensuality is perception.
It’s how you anchor in the world, how you taste the moment, how you let it move through you.

To be sensual is to be so alive.
To be fully awake to what is - and to who you are.

So next time you are to take the stage, or enter a new room, pause.
Enjoy that brief moment of heightened alertness.
Feel the air against your skin.
Notice the energy - the temperature, the rhythm, the silence.
Let the lights blind you a bit.
Then step in.

Rooted. Sensual. Present.

With love,

Charlotte