Ryder Cooley and Lady Moon (Ngonda Badilia) in Xmalia

Pam White and our friend Suzanne were talking about pentimento, the practice of over-painting – basically the artist changing his/her mind.  Pam had some examples of her own pentimento on her Google+ page.

That got me to reflecting on the past two days, when i have been directing and making new movement for Xmalia. The process of choreographing, standing back, and then going in and layering in different or denser or richer movement is painterly in a similar way.  Sometimes the hint of a first rendering is there, other times I obliterate it completely, but even so, some trace remains.

Maybe I just like the feeling of the word.  It reminds me of another favorite word, palimpsest, the difference being that in that case the layers of a manuscript or scroll or painting were scraped or washed away, say with milk and oat bran.

I think what I really like is the idea of underlayers – of something earlier either concealed or revealed by what has been put down later.

When I went from being an actor to being a dancer, the actor was still there, shining through in the dances.  Now that I am writing, the dancer is still there, because the words are gestural – like movement to me – they have a physical resonance that I can feel.

And sometimes I have scraped things away – old text, old selves.  More about that in The Journal this week.

I am interested in how you are feeling your layers.  Over-painting or scraping away with milk and oat bran?