I hope you can join me in Boston for the premiere of the full length version of SPEAK. It is the first time I am performing a solo in about 10 years. This direction surprises and delights me. More to come!
Jul1
Category Archives: the dance
Jun13
new calendar!
I have added this page to our website, to let you know about our upcoming workshops, tele-classes and performances. Make a special note of the performance of SPEAK in Boston on July 18. I will be premiering the full length version of that dance. It is my first new solo in a long time, and I am excited to share it. Come and see!
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May26
embrace and surrender
Photo: Toni Gauthier
My friend Ann Carlson is a brilliant choreographer who is creating a new work, The Symphonic Body, to be performed at Stanford this week. It is a gestural choir performed by 75 individuals from all walks of university life, from gardeners to scientists. She has observed and distilled their gestures into this new work. She speaks of the dance as being about embrace and surrender.
“This (self) embracing draws metaphor and meaning from the surroundings of the everyday. But during the making of the performance the embrace gives way to a surrender, there is a letting go of the individual identity into an experience of being part of something larger than the self. Symphonic Body is a social sculpture.
The particular choreographed gestures themselves become part of a larger movement tapestry within each performer and within the piece as a whole. So, these works, performed by the actual individuals who live with these gestures (as opposed to trained performers taking on the gestures of other people) exist in this tension between embrace and surrender, giving rise to questions about what constitutes humanity and aliveness in a given moment.”
I have a lot of questions about humanity and aliveness right now. Questions about how to maintain connection to humanity and aliveness when thrust into a dark night of the soul. Rage is here, grief is here, despair is here. So are light, breath, and hope. When the shit hits the fan, is it possible to embrace and surrender? Is that a good idea?
Ann’s words about “letting go of individual identity into an experience of being part of something larger than the self” feel right. Not just for my current situation, but in general. If the individual identity is too big, too loud, then the subtle orchestration of the “symphonic body” of the self as part of something larger is lost. At least that is how it feels to me. It is comforting to think of myself as part of a social sculpture. Not one cast in stone, but in breath, gesture, time and space – continually changing, undoing and remaking itself. Embracing and surrendering one day at a time, one moment at a time.
Thank you Ann, again and again.
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May17
thank you universe
Today I learned that I had been awarded a Connecticut Artist’s Fellowship in Choreography. A friend suggested that I apply and so I did. The news was wildly unexpected and appreciated. A blessing and a strong beam of light pointing forward.
I used to depend on on raising money from foundations and corporations along with bookings to support my dance company. Fundraising was a constant, teetery dance, a bizarre mazurka with changing partners and alliances, all danced on an uneven floor. It was also a contest of endurance, persistence and grit. Then the economy tilted even further, shifting away from public funds for smaller, independent artists, moving toward the safer zone of funding big companies and institutions. I was tired of expending so much energy on the fundraising, and proportionally less time making work, along with the politics, and what could feel like the creation and maintanance of relationships for gain. I am speaking for myself here. I am sure that is not everyone’s experience. Real friendships did bloom, tender roses in a field of weeds. I still treasure those friendships – all of them rooted in a deep passion for dance and respect for the dancemakers.
So why the galaxy image? Initially, I thought that this picture was of the Andromeda Galaxy, but it turns out that it is something called a flocculent spiral – a stellar nursery – which “plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies and it is also in the earliest stages of star formation that planetary systems first appear.” I like that because it is about beginnings and what looks like cooperation.
So I am thinking about relationship and inter-dependence and cosmic support and stuff like that. I am thinking about John Cage, chance and quincunxes (fated events). And I am feeling how the small events, like receiving this blessing, are part of a bigger phenomenon that holds us all together as we grow, each in our own unique and meandering way.
And I am appreciating. Thank you universe.