Barefootblogger: thoughts on dance

Cog

2009-01-23T10:22:00.000-06:00

So often as a performer I am a cog in the wheel of a picture or image much bigger than myself, and it is a thrill.

This is the case in MN Orchestra’s staging of Bernstein’s Mass. Six of us from JSB, as well as four extra dancers from around town, flit in an out throughout the almost two-hour piece. We represent the divine and troubled thoughts in the head of the Celebrant, the lead character, our hero.

At the end of the piece that takes us from the sublime to the ridiculous and back, we enter at the climax of the Celebrant’s meltdown, and just like at the end of London Bridge is Falling Down, we all fall down! And stay, and stay, and stay. We are there, utterly still, for like, 15 minutes. Limbs fall asleep, and I swear a chorister nodded off last night, he was so late in getting back up.

There we are, talented, muscled dancers, just lying there, and it is just the thing. We are participating in and contributing to an image. The brilliant thing about it is that when we finally get to our feet, we feel as though we’ve really been asleep. We are groggy, we look it, and that gets the point across like nobody’s business: the Celebrant has been doing battle with his Faith.

Then we stand and stand and stand. The folks around us sing and sing, and the orchestra plays and plays behind us. Stillness is a foreign thing to a dancer, and it’s fun to be charged with it. We stand amid the voices and the music; we get to simultaneously witness and participate.

The best though was the audible sniffling coming from the audience just as the lights went out and a moment before all hell broke loose applause-wise. This piece is historic (written for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1964) and has not been performed on this scale since then. The applause went on and on, and when Raymond the Celebrant came out, he was proud and humbled and just stood there taking it all in.

It’s so nice to be a cog sometimes, to simply get to be there. It’s nice to be reminded that what we do is bigger than ourselves and that faltering faith can be a beautiful thing.

Weird Food

2008-12-31T14:16:00.001-06:00

As the year winds down I sit sleepy on my bed, just home from visiting family.

The end of my year, December in general, was busy and yet filled with lots of joyful moments: spent Thanksgiving cooking for three close girlfriends, toured four states in 2 weeks with JSB, and did a Nutcracker gig w/ Nic that couldn’t have been more fun. (It was SO fun, and I’m so happy to be able to say that! I’m so proud of us. I let the fullness of that experience penetrate my soul, and for that I am thankful.)

I visited my mom and other family for a week in Charleston, SC, a great place to visit in late December when one lives in Minneapolis. My mom takes care of my Grandpa Bill, in his nineties and my dad’s step-dad. G. Bill is therefore my mom’s former father-in-law. How cool that she takes care of him! I think he sort of forgets who she is technically speaking; he just seems to understand that she’s “family” and that that’s enough. It’s nice to have this reminder that family can be chosen, like all my adopted family here who cared and cared for me pre and post divorce.

A sweet theme that keeps emerging from this past month and a half or so is food, like in cooking it, sharing it, prepping to take a dish somewhere or sharing recipes through email. Lots of roasted vegetables: my improvised roasted Brussels sprouts w/ fresh cranberries and also Sally’s roasted gold beets served steaming w/ goat cheese. Then there’s my usual tuna (broiled w/ special lavender infused salt from Saltzberg!) and even last night’s Cincinnati chili recipe served over spaghetti w/ grated cheddar and, of all things, oyster crackers to soak up the juice. (Any Ohioans recognize a “Skyline” 3-way?)

It’s basically archetypal to bond over food, from spontaneous bites to long-planned coursed meals. So this attention to food detail should come as no surprise to me. It’s just fun to note that I get a sweet thrill from exchanging recipes w/ colleagues and then with family. It’s fun to feel fairly competent and yet a total novice all at once in a kitchen. (And I love that I can have a guilty-pleasure trip to Taco Bell with my mom then turn all esoteric a few hours later in G. Bill’s kitchen.)

Tonight Jack and I will wind up the year at the home of some of his best friends. I think we’re having pasta, and I’m so up for that. I’m still working on coffee however and thinking about all the “I shoulds”: I should be cleaning for my party on Friday. I should be catching up on email and other computery things that need to get done. I should be doing something toward the wedding other than reading fiction that takes place where we are honeymooning (Florence)…

Instead I contemplate a fresh cup and nibble on Jack’s mom’s peanut clusters. It’s the dark chocolate that gets me. I must get that recipe.

Losing (Almost) Everything and Other Gifts that Keep on Giving

2008-12-08T15:26:00.001-06:00

On tour in Kearney, Nebraska last week my hard-drive crashed. I lost everything: photos, essays, an old email folder from when I had a visi account with, like, a phonebook long collection. I could go on and on, and my brain does. I was up for two hours in the wee hours the other morning remembering more lost things: Rebecca's poem about the pain of loneliness after her divorce, my writings about Nic's visual art, Jack's and my Europe doings including the details of when he first proposed.

As a Buddhist I've been hip to the notion of non-attachment and other such lofty concepts. And you know what I've discovered? I still am!

In early 1999 while on a trip to NYC my back-pack got stolen. It had a ton of stuff in it and so I cancelled all the usual things. Jim was staying at my place in Minneapolis at the time and was able to send my passport so I could at least fly home. Along with my passport came a lovely note explaining this non-attachment thing (Jim introduced me to Buddhism), and all of a sudden his sort of glamorous/popular spiritual practice became practical and utterly sincere to me. And so I let it all go. Goodbye great book that I was in the middle of. So long favorite sporty sweat pants. Farewell perfect red back-pack given to me by my dear friends at Gaynor Minden. I think there was also a fair amount of cash and an uber personal journal. Anyway, adios!

The good folks at the computer store in Kearney (pronounced "carney") hustled me a new hard-drive and dryly explained that they weren't able to retrieve a thing from my old one. Ouch. A pin prick of pain followed by a growing pool of blood like the last scene in Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge". (As recently seen at the Guthrie. Magnificent!) It hurt like hell, was dramatic as all get-out, but somehow, like all good theater, there was a gift in there...

Of course I didn't lose any pertinent emails. I was just stalled for a few days. My METRO editor re-sent my latest piece so I could edit it. And during that wee-hour mini meltdown I remembered that about two months ago I actually put the latest version of my resume onto my zip-drive.

As I sit in my soon-to-be home (Jack's house) I am so grateful. It's three in the afternoon, and after my all-nighter driving home with Em and Steph I am on my second cup of coffee. I sprawl on the perfect little red velvet couch that Jack surprised me with in the fall. Geko curls up at my legs. Scented candles burn, and a live tree stands at the ready to be decorated tonight, it's imperfection suiting our needs perfectly as it nestles into the threshold between living and dining rooms. And check this out: it's snowing! I am carless, housebound, still unshowered and I count my blessings on every finger and toe.

I send up joy and prayers to Ellen Marie and her beautiful mama who just passed away from this life. May they both have a smooth transition.

Life is beautiful, hard, bitter and so sweet it hurts. That sweet hurt opens the heart, like a break. Break open

Exercise

2008-11-04T08:26:00.002-06:00

I just voted. In and out in 25 minutes. Enough time for me to go home again before work. I sit chanting and restless. After my big day of JSB rehearsal and tech @ Carleton, I’ll head to Jack’s to watch the returns and crack open that chilling bottle of Chardonnay we’ve been saving for a special occasion.

Obama!

Reflecting: Floes, Floss and Fullness

2008-11-02T11:55:00.001-06:00

It’s been so long (again) since I’ve written. For this blog, that is. I’ve been doing plenty for METRO and for assorted proposals and grants. Satisfying, but in a different way.

This writing needs to happen because it offers reflection, something I don’t do enough of or make enough time for, thus these gaps. It’s painful because so much rich living is going on, and I don’t want it all to pass by unacknowledged.

One of the richest happenings of my choreographic career took place just a few weeks ago. But let me back up…

In August (after my Fringe show and Alaska), I had the honor of making a new ballet on Minnesota Ballet in Duluth. The commission came through this spring, and when the time came to pin down an idea, one flowed to me through the grace of my remembering.

Two springs ago James Sewell Ballet went to Iceland. We stayed a few extra days after our performances and toured around a little. Our host took us on the “golden circle”, a route just outside Reykjavik that includes geysers, mom-and-pop spas and a magnificent waterfall (where I saw a rainbow).

It was one of those great days when you’re with some of your favorite people, you’ve done all your work (and well), and you spend a whole day outside changing from sweatshirt to bathing suit and back. Returning to our hotel some eight hours later we sat salty and sandy in the van, drunk with exhaustion, yet with eyes and spirits opened wide to the stunning scenery of that part of the world. It was like excavating Mars.

When we flew home I had a window seat. And then there it was: Greenland.

Now, anyone who knows me even a little knows that I’m a city girl. My heart leapt out of my chest when I first went to NYC at the age of nine, and to this day, when I first set eyes on that city after an absence my stomach does a flip-flop like for a first love.

When Jack and I started dating we went hiking outside of Duluth. I had to buy special shoes for the novel occasion, and when we arrived at the top of our climb I asked where the Starbucks was.

That’s how much of a city-dweller I am. But then there’s Greenland.

I sat in that window seat with my heart in my throat for the couple of hours it took to fly over it. My senses had been opened to this type of spare and lonely beauty in Iceland, and now I soaked it in like a sponge does water, completely and heavily.

I thought about a new dance. I even came home and put that notion into a blog about the trip. And weirdly, I thought specifically about a new dance on the MN Ballet of Duluth. Their remoteness has always fascinated me. They put up with that weather, the Superior lake effect, the hilly topography. I thought that they, of all people, would understand a dance inspired by extreme natural (yet brutal) beauty.

Two years later this commission came through. Back flew my memory and out popped a title, “Flying Over Greenland”. We call it FOG for short, and I just love that.

Two weekends ago the piece premiered in Duluth. It was on a great mixed bill that included Tudor (“Little Improvisations”) and Balanchine (“Who Cares?”). I drove up and back three days in a row to tech and see the dress and finally, the show.

During intermission, right before my piece, Robert, the Artistic Director, asked me to bow with the cast. That meant I couldn’t sit with Jack in our middle-of-the-house, middle-of-the-row seats. I left him there to experience the piece for himself (without me sweating on him or twitching around). Robert took me to the back of the house from where, right after the piece, we could run backstage via a concrete hallway that parallels the audience but is behind closed doors.

I’ll never forget that run. Holding hands, Robert and I tore down the hallway through strains of applause. We arrived backstage in time to see the last couple bow before one of the dancers gestured to the wing for me to come out. My strapless dress managed to stay put. My green boots did B-plus of their own accord. My smile did not extinguish for the rest of the night.

There was a review the next morning which was very good… “Freeh’s choreography…eschews the traditional lines and movements of ballet. Her preference is for limbs to be askew and to find interesting angles. Often movements were not coordinate but more of a discordant chain reaction. The result is quite enthralling.” Not that that matters…much. I now have a new 23-minute ballet on my hands and in my rep, and I am so proud.

And those dancers! Each one rose (or rather, dropped) to the occasion of performing the piece, and I am indebted to them. They trusted my aesthetic and allowed their plies to deepen and their pelvises to drop. They became the ice floes, the mountains, the fissures, and they melted, those lovers at the end.

The next weekend JSB had our fall performances. It was a great show. The six new solos, the portraits, went so well, and were nicely dispersed throughout the evening. Each one was compelling and showed something vulnerable about the person dancing.

In Em’s, her out-of-breath “Emily” spoken into the mic at the end did me in every time, it was such a true moment.

In mine it was after I throw a rose to someone in the audience. The houselights are up and after the moment of throwing I have nothing more to do. During the Sunday matinee I burst into a smile right then ‘cause the lady who caught the rose blew me a kiss. So sweet.

In Chris’ it’s the stuff in the middle, the beautiful Bach-inspired plopping of body parts onto the floor.

In Nic’s it may be the eating of his heart off his sleeve (roasted turkey sewn on w/ dental floss), but perhaps more it’s his face at the end, after the ingestion, after the jumping, after.

And in Sal’s, well, many moments, funny and poignant. The stopped moment when James enters upstage like a memory. The simple bouncing to the Cranberries while holding body parts. And those kids at the end and a mother’s love that gets to fully express at the end of a long day dancing.

Our new members, Steph and Cory, fit in so well. They are a pleasure to work with and be with onstage. (Steph, really, can I borrow your freckles for just a little while?) The sense of company is good, it’s team, it’s on-the-same-page, and I feel the importance of reflecting.

Yes Again

2008-09-21T17:10:00.003-05:00

Every year I love getting my September Vogue in the mail. I’ve been a subscriber for at least 10 years and a reader, yes folks, since I was 13, maybe 12.

I love the advertisements. I love the letters from readers. I love the editor’s letter, the last page, the cover. But most of all I love the crazy thing they call haute couture and the fantastical way that it’s photographed.

Any tour mate of mine can tell you that on long plane or van rides they will eventually hear my careful ripping of page after page. I collect book reviews, recipes, essays. But mostly I rip out portions of pages just to capture a zany hat or shoe or skirt length. These things eventually go into a folder where I sift through them when questing for costume ideas.

The September Vogue particularly thrills me because of its time peg to all things autumn, my favorite season. The enormity inspires me; this year boasts 798 pages. It’s like a phone book or a bible or those old Spiegel catalogs. It makes me want to buy school shoes. (And so I did. Found great deep purple wedges at Target. $17.99 and not even on sale: slightly unsensible but way cute. Then bought a pair of Dansko Mary Jane clogs: way sensible yet still cute, the ultimate back-to-JSB-shoe, in brown of course.)

Returning to James Sewell Ballet at the end of every summer feels exactly like going back to school, butterflies and all. You’d think after all these years (this is my 15th season with the company!) that I’d be over this particular butterfly effect. Alas, no. I even plan what I’m wearing and my lunch.

At three weeks in, I’ve settled in to a rhythm. I’m back in shape (even wearing pointe shoes all day), complete with requisite about-to-fall-off left big toenail and another one ingrown with a podiatrist appointment lined up for next week.

It feels good, being part of the team again after my indie summer that I think I’m finally ready to let go of, it was so amazing. Some of it I recorded here and some of it has not yet made it in due to lack of time, inability to articulate, or both. Like my ripping out of portions of pages, I will attempt to capture the highlights here…

After five weeks in Portland Jack and I went to Europe. I actually committed to going, to dedicating 12 whole days to a relationship and not to work. We had a blast, a ball. We missed trains and didn’t sweat it. We begged for tickets in front of a theater in Paris and actually got in to the astounding show: Wim Vandekeybus’ dance company. I could go on and on about our doings, but here’s the biggie: Jack proposed. In Saltzburg. On top of a fortress. There were tears. We took pictures. And I wasn’t ready.

But the proposal put the marriage conversation on the table. It took me awhile to get to the point where I didn’t squint at the notion of (again!) discussing invitations and food and dresses and flowers…all the crap that gets in the way of the actual union, the big, brave decision to wed and do life together as legal and spiritual partners.

So we kept it to ourselves. I started seeing my therapist again upon returning home. I needed to process, but I wanted no commentary, just a reflection back. And so in late July, on a Sunday when we had just returned from a night on a sailboat in Duluth, when I had a Scrabble date with a friend and also a METRO piece due the next day, I said Yes. In the midst of my busy life, I said Yes.

I needed those 2 months of thinking time. Time to continue mourning Jim and that whole scenario of what I thought my life with him would be. A surprise was also needing to mourn the loss of my newfound independence. Smack! I bumped up squarely (again!) into my old and tired (oh, I’m so tired of this one) belief, something about not being able to have a successful career and a successful relationship at the same time. Well, there it is. And here’s a brand new pointe shoe. Let’s just shatter that one, shall we?

And so, Yes!

Jack and I sat on the news another 2 weeks. My mom was coming to town soon to see my newest piece, “small aida”, in the MN Fringe Festival. We wanted to tell our mothers first and in an intimate setting. (We stood in a circle in Jack’s mother’s kitchen, crying and drinking gin and tonics. Sweet!)

Creating “small aida” with Stephanie was pure joy. Our friendship of 19 years solidified into a thing I can climb up, wrap my arms around, stand upon. She is a sister in art and Scorpioness. Our piece surpassed my expectations and grew richer with each performance. So satisfying, gratifying. And to perform in Theatre de la Jeune Lune, as possibly one of the last shows in that special space, was a poignant honor.

Then I went to Alaska for a week to set a ballet of James’ and excerpts of another. JSB will tour there next April to perform with the fine dancers of Alaska Dance Theater.

The following week had me in Duluth choreographing a new commissioned work for Minnesota Ballet, a gem of a company. I created “Flying Over Greenland” and I’m so happy with it. It’s en pointe yet does not compromise upper body movement or movement into and out of the floor. Here are the section names: Floe, Flora, Melt, Fauna, Fissure, Fly. (Can’t wait to see the premiere next weekend in Ladysmith, WI.)

Then a blessed week fully off before returning to JSB.

Last week I had a residency at Carleton College. I re-staged the first movement of my Fringe piece from last summer, “We’ll Survive If We Don’t Protect Ourselves”. Originally a quartet for 2 women and 2 men, it lives on at Carleton as a female septet. I couldn’t be happier with the results. Those dancers are intelligent and hard-working.

And I’m tired, but good and happy too on this last day of summer. Now, on to Vogue…

Engagement

2008-08-08T12:57:00.002-05:00

Steph and I have 2 shows left of “small aida”, my piece in this year’s Fringe Festival. It’s been (yet again) the time of my life.

I am compelled, however, after having just read a few new audience reviews about the piece, to respond here. (Audience reviews can be found @ fringefestival.org.) First, let me include the reviews I am referring to:

"Not entertained " by chas jensen
I rate all performances I attend by a "was I entertained" criteria and this one failed to do that.
I approached this show with high hopes because of the pre-show hype, the venue and the dancers.
As I sat there trying to figure out what was going on while watching standard dance moves, I remembered I don't like to sit there trying to figure out what is going on.
During the performance, I was reminiscing about the fringe show, "Buckets and Tap Shoes", at the same location and wanted that experience. That was entertainment.
All I can say is, if the performance doesn't speak to me, and I have to strain to interpret the message, I'm working too hard. And that is what I try to get away from.

"Disappointing"  by Richard Heise
Did not live up to her 2007 Fringe performance. No matter how symbolic I don't find walking across a stage, to music, and placing a small figurine on the floor dance. The performance was flat and almost boring. I have loved Penelopes works in the past but was not impressed with this one.

Ok, it’s me again. First off, let me start by saying that of course folks are entitled to their opinion, and I’m happy that there is a forum where that can be given. That being said, I also get to respond…

To Chas,

I appreciate your being upfront about your criteria in judging whether or not a show is good. Clearly, you were not entertained.

I do not dance to entertain. I dance and make work because it is how I engage with the world. I share this with audiences and hope to engage their attention. If an audience is entertained, that is icing on the cake, it is not my motivation or my objective.

It is grossy unfair to compare my work to that of (the indeed magnificent) “Buckets and Taps”. All I can say to that is: apples and oranges. One work of art should never be compared to another.

Which brings me to…

To Richard,

Please don’t compare my work against itself. Again I say…apples and oranges. If artists lived with the expectation (from themselves or others) that their newest creation had to live up to some invisible (and subjective!) pre-established code of merit, excellence, whatever one wants to say, we would all be stymied, ALL of us, artists and audiences alike.

And no, it is not dance to walk across the stage to music and place a figurine on the floor. It is, however, dance/theater, and it propells our story forward. Dance can be many, many things. That moment is justified given that we are “dancing” 95% of the show, just the two of us, for 45 minutes.

Fortunately, I believe in this piece. I am thrilled that we have 2 shows left. I wish I had one tonight. Instead I will see six other shows and not compare them.

Thanks Chas and Richard, for reinforcing my belief in “small aida”, for seeing it, and for giving a shit enough to write about it. Seems like engagement to me.

Two Days Out

2008-07-29T21:36:00.001-05:00

The Fringe opens in two days and though I have a seemingly endless list of yet-to-do’s, I want to record this moment of the process.

My two-person version of “Aida”, (called “small aida”), is tickling me. First I need to say that as ever, Stephanie Fellner is a gem: to me, to the work and to this community of dance artists in general.

Today I had the great pleasure of finishing my solo. No kidding. It was, for maybe the first time ever, a ball to be in the studio by myself, crafting a solo that comes near the end of the piece. I put off doing it till now of course. The usual story about needing to get everything together first. I can always rehearse myself at midnight if I absolutely need to, right? Thankfully not necessary, but just about. (Though I will be up till past then for sure tonight editing music (!!), sewing my costume, etc.

Our show is crazily full of props. Not sure how it grew so much in that department (maybe to make up for lack of bodies), but there they are. And their presence is justified; we do indeed need them all.

Tomorrow Steph and I meet @ 8:30 AM to begin our load-in to the magnificent Theatre de la Jeune Lune. (Though the theater company closed the space remains, at least for now, and we are blessed to be in there.) Our load-in entails wheeling 2 huge screen thingys down the street, from the JSB studio to Jeune Lune. Must every self-produced show I do involve rolling things down the street?! Last summer had Melisse and I, then Chrissy and Nic, then finally Jack and I, rolling my donated chairs down the 5 or so blocks from rental space to venue and back. Jack took pics (at 10 PM no less) and my heart did a flip-flop over the fact that he could be so good-spirited at that hour on a Sunday while helping me.

So here we go. I can safely say I’m in love with this show. Come see it:

Thursday, July 31 @ 8:30 PM
Monday, August 4 @ 10 PM
Thursday, August 7 @ 5:30 PM
Saturday, August 9 @ 8:30 PM
Sunday, August 10 @ 2:30 PM

Verdi's "Aida", Small and with a Drummer

2008-07-22T21:41:00.000-05:00

The dance community here in the twin cities has suffered a blow. Our beloved local theater, the Southern, lost its Artistic Director of 33 years. Two weeks ago the board put Jeff on “indefinite leave”, and mid-last week the news broke publicly. There was an emergency dance community “town hall” meeting that very night. I, along with about 50 others, attended.

Last night was another such meeting but on a bigger scale and with the board of the Southern in attendance. I was not able to go due to a long-standing rehearsal with eight other dancers for my gig with the MN Orch next weekend.

The upshot of all of this, amongst the many unknowns, is that I feel more than ever the great importance to keep on making art. In this economic (and corporate) climate, when choices are being made that are often money-based, those of us who don’t operate by those standards must keep on keeping on.

I am in the midst of two enormous projects. The MN Orch one is a down-and-dirty gig, quickly choreographed, quickly executed and a great joy. The other deeper, bigger project is “small aida”, my second piece in a two years for the MN Fringe. This year my venue is Theatre de la Jeune Lune (another painful story about an arts organization heading south). It is poignant to be in that space, to execute a new piece there, untried but oh-so-true.

“small aida” is comprised of myself and Steph Fellner, my friend and colleague of 19 years. (Yep, count ‘em.) We met at the Ailey School in 1989, and when our paths crossed here in 1994 I just about keeled over when I saw her pregnant and gorgeous in a Starbucks. She’s a rockstar, a muse, and the best damn Aida ever.

The piece will be finished soon. It’s about our relationship and also we tell the story (few are familiar w/ it so that’s….hard). My hope is that it’ll be clear even w/out folks needing to read the program notes. Anyway, it’s a gift every day to work with such a generous human and artist.

And so onward. I seek to make connections with my summer doings. I began with teaching James’ “Aida” choreography in Portland. I now craft my own story, and do the MN Orch gig, all to Verdi, and all to my own drummer.

Merce

2008-06-10T12:44:00.001-05:00

“Hi! How are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

At first glance this bit of dialogue seems to be straight out of a language primer, like the first things you’d learn in French or German.

These are in fact the first sentences I shared with Merce Cunningham whom I just spoke with on the phone. He honored me with an interview for my September METRO piece as the Walker’s bringing him here for a the-world-will-be-watching series of performances in the Rainbow Quarry in St. Cloud. Down in the quarry. Merce on the rocks.

He was unutterably polite, and lucid. When I referred to Cage he said, “John” this and “John” that. Sweet.

He was speaking from his studio, a place where I’ve performed and where I danced something else for filming during my years in NY. Its famous location way west and on the water is always a bear to find the first time. Bethune Street I think.

Can you imagine? Almost 90, wheelchair-bound, and yet STILL in the studio everyday (with the fans audibly whirring even through my cell phone connection).

My sense of appreciation is deep and wide like the quarry. Part organic and part “man-made”, dug out, formed for use.

Weather Report

2008-06-06T15:42:00.001-05:00

I just opened my balcony door again. Today has been fickle: alternately sunny, rainy then windy such that it scares my cat.

Today, four days into my jet lag after returning from an art-filled and magical trip to Europe, I wrestle with getting my life, my routine (such as it is in the summer), back on track.

Lass than an hour ago I received my feedback from the McKnight panel who selected this year’s three choreographic Fellowship recipients. (Not me.) I gained such insight into the process after having just served on the panel that selected this year’s dancer winners, that not much came as a surprise. The sad truth is that a heck of a lot of weight is put onto the work samples, and mine, in retrospect, was subpar. Ironic given that I actually paid for it to get done right. I just made bad choices. The feedback, as always, was enlightening. Though down, I know I’ll muster soon.

(Rainy. Windy.)

(A few words about sitting on the panel…

The five of us panelists bonded. We respectfully argued and metaphorically rolled our sleeves up, got our hands dirty, pulled our hair out. At the end of the second day it came down to a collective decision. I don’t know if any one of us would have settled on the exact three ultimately chosen, so completely were they determined by the sum of our decisive parts. I can honestly say that the process was truly democratic, and for that I am proud.

It was insightful, participating in a process that is so subject to human… well, humanness. With the sincerest intentions we passed judgement. We have subsequently left ourselves open to scrutiny, to questions regarding our choices. We are not allowed to discuss these and must pass along any inquiries to the program administrator, thereby protecting our process and that of future panelists.)

(Windy. Windy.)

Now, just a moment ago, I got a call from my performing arts contact at the Walker Art Center who has, hang on to your hats folks, arranged for me to interview Merce Cunningham next week for my September METRO Magazine column!

(Sunny. Windy. Windy.)

It’s almost too much to contain: all this art, all these things and people I care about. I sat at my mother’s antique desk and just sat there, then put my face in my hands, the better to swallow it all.

I feel home now. I deem jet lag over and resolve to plant my feet back into the Minneapolis (and St. Paul) soil. Monday I will start my new piece for the Fringe, “Small Aida”. (Yes, inspired by opera.)

(Let’s hope for lightning.)

Touching Paul

2008-05-17T16:27:00.003-05:00

As I sit amongst the rubble of the half-unpacked suitcases that litter my apartment floor since my return from Portland last night, I find that I am caught in a time-warp, or perhaps, a wrinkle.

It’s always a little disorienting, returning from a big trip (I was gone 5 weeks) and feeling the need to reintegrate yet still savor what’s been left behind. It’s probably no coincidence that yesterday (I just realized) also marks exactly two years since J and I split. Sad. Still.

And then today, as I was routinely checking email, I found out that Taylor is having another audition. I can’t be there. Sad. Still. But good. Right. Crazy.

Three days after J and I split I flew to NYC to audition for Paul Taylor. Out of 450 women, I made it down to the final 4. I didn’t get the gig. That two-day period changed the course of my life.

After that, I spent the next nine months (an interestingly apt period of time) thinking that I was going to move back to NY after my season w/ JSB ended. So that next February I spent a week at Taylor during a JSB layoff. I took class then watched the company rehearse for Paul. I took copious notes (that someday will take a shape slightly more public than my shelf). Suffice it to say that that company, those specific dancers, as of Feb. 2007, are some of the finest dancers (and I mean that word in the broadest, biggest most generous way possible) in the world.

At the end of the week I talked to Paul. He told me no one was leaving and that he did not have a spot for me. He did not tell me to hang around. He told me to not put all my eggs in one basket, and after telling him I was contemplating moving back to NY, he sent me home with the words, “Oh no, you MUST be performing!”

As I sat there, touching knees with Paul Taylor, telling him about my life here in Minneapolis, about my situation with JSB, how great it is and how blessed I’ve been by the company’s generous resources, I talked myself back into my life here.

Since then the rewards, the proof of my good decision, have been so blatantly obvious that even a child could see it. I recovered my, for lack of a better word, womanhood, for one; and the professional, for lack of a better word, opportunities, for many, many others.

Yep, it was all of two years ago when, at the end of the first day of that 2-day audition for Paul he called me over to him. He held my hand and said, “I just want to tell you, no matter what happens tomorrow, I think you’re a very special dancer, and I’d love to work with you someday.”

THAT was my reward, the justification for my half-crazed trip to NY three days after J and I split. Somehow it took events that dramatic to set into motion all my actions since then relative to love, my career; relative to life.

So today as I responded to my good friend Steve’s email about next week’s Taylor audition, I hit “reply” and said that I’m not going. For one thing, Jack and I will be in Europe. For another, well, Jack and I will be in Europe.

Yes, I feel ten thousand pangs right now and probably will forever though possibly less acute. I rifle through memories of life since then and am so proud and happy and SURE that I made the right choice and am on the right path.

Instead of dancing for Paul, how about if I resolve to become Paul? Yes, let me channel my dancing and choreography right into his cosmic path and become him instead.

I touched hands and then knees with Paul Taylor, and now I’m going to Europe and best, I get to spend hours on a plane with Jack.

Demons

2008-05-01T01:47:00.001-05:00

I saw Scapino Ballet Rotterdam tonight and I find that I am restless, frustrated, and generally not at my ease. (Funny how neurotic I can be. Old patterns are hard to break, and a general sense of restlessness has a history of following me around, ready to strike, when I am vulnerable.)

Why am I vulnerable? Perhaps because this “Aida” project is winding down. Perhaps that, coupled with the fact that despite Monday’s rockin Limon class I feel profoundly out of shape. Ok, so I’ll get myself to class tomorrow. (There’s a reasonably timed one at 12:30 that I’ll check out.)

Why do I still battle that one, getting to class? I love class. It makes me so happy. And yet there’s this perverse part of me that resents having to go when I’m “off”. Ah, there’s the rub: a dancer is never “off”. Nope, no dice. (Though I did manage to steal many weeks last summer when working on other projects.) But here’s the thing: I do not feel good, or “myself” if I don’t take class. There’s something in me that just can’t forgive myself the luxury of time off. And yet I’ll grab at it anyway, like a kid stubbornly refusing to do something (or not) just because.

So I know all this about myself. That’s progress. I’ve been here and back a time or ten, and I will see this through. Anyway, what does this have to do with the ballet tonight?

Because I am not quite “myself”, because I feel mostly out of shape, I cannot freely watch, absorb, honestly take in. Nevertheless, here’s what I can honestly say about tonight: I am frustrated because the fabulous, gorgeous dancers made the choreography look better than it was. The audience ate it up, and that just slays me. Yes, it was virtuosic. Yes, there were some amazing images. But! the choreography repeated itself such that by the last piece it was rendered ineffective. All four pieces on the program (by 2 different choreograpgers) featured the gesture of a spastic, flapping hand motion. Potentially brilliant if used sparingly, but in all four pieces!? Nope, I just can’t buy it. And truly, the movement vocabulary in general simply wasn’t “all that”. Again, it was virtuosic, with masterful falling and recovering into and out of the floor, but the intersection of ballet and modern (for lack of something more poetic), was not as thrilling as it could have been. And I guess I mean to say, as it should have been, given this company’s reception and reputation.

And so I write. I wring out my frustrations on my keypad. I look forward to class tomorrow and to discussing the show with folks who’ll get me. I ramp up to brave class at Oregon Ballet Theatre with my friend Christopher who has kindly welcomed me. I wrestle my demons even as my sweet piece in Dance Magazine hits the newsstand. (More on that later; a mighty thrill it is…)

Student

2008-04-29T10:03:00.001-05:00

There’s nothing like taking class in a new city that makes me feel more welcomed and part of the soil. When I took Josie Moseley’s Limon class last Monday I was more here. (Portland) I appreciated her giving me corrections right off the bat. I especially appreciated being in a low stress setting filled with humor yet utter seriousness at what we were learning. (Plus there’s a terrific pianist.) The blend of play with information delivered makes me want to work, to investigate. I find there is room for me and the stuff I bring that is all mine.

Yesterday I took her class again; I loved it even more. Everything Josie says is informed by her physically (and spiritually) experiencing her craft. And she’s generous with the information. It is not held back; she willingly gives us the tools we need, and she rewards us for it. Hers is a serious class for folks who want a modern technique/style steeped in a rich history. I’ve always been a sucker for classical modern, in fact it’s often more “where I live” than the ballet world, and I must find a consistent way to scratch this itch in Minneapolis.

Taking class was a gift. I did not want to get up in the morning, and yet I know myself well enough to know that I’d feel so good if I trekked the ½ hour to the studio. I already knew where it was and the general drill, and as my opera call wasn’t until 7 PM, I coerced my exhaustion with the notion that I’d take a nap in the afternoon. (Indeed I did, lazy me.)

I am reminded that I love being a student. Perhaps more so after these two weeks of teaching and generally being in charge. It is so nice to be on the receiving end. (I do receive when I teach, it’s just different, and the energy output is intense.) I remembered today how much I simply love to move, to dance. There’s a rightness to it, a peace that it sometimes brings, and when I’m in that zone, the whole rest of my life falls simply into place like a skeleton’s hanging bones.

No Elephant

2008-04-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

As reflected in my passion for old movie musicals, I love the behind the scenes goings-on of putting on a show. Excepting Broadway or Cirque du Soleil, I’d be hard pressed to find another setting where there’s more backstage business and interest than opera.

It’s quite something to be a part of a production as enormous as this staging of “Aida”. True, there is no elephant, but there is a massive twelve-step rotating staircase with a giant golden falcon up which several dancers and singers walk. (Yes, as it rotates.) Super cool, magnificent even. Nothing is more sublime than the closing of Act 1: Scene 2 when the deck rotates as the music swells, the chorus gathers round, arms outstretched, their faces skyward. The principal singers counter the music, entering into and out of it seemingly at will, as perfectly as Verdi deemed.

The dancers and I, at work next door on a flat studio floor, are getting called into the staging studio with increasing frequency to work a scene with the singers. My heart thrills for them as I watch them rotate. The music, (still just a piano), those voices and the subtle movement of the set combine to strike the perfect visual note. The first time we put all the elements together every single dancer’s face was shining.

When it was done we went back into our room for notes. I prefaced by asking, “Wasn’t that exciting?” Beth, one of the two fierce women playing a man, exclaimed, “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!” I still get teary as I relay the story. Folks like her, with attitudes like that, keep the rest of us from slipping into jadedness. (Beth in particular, who almost left the audition when I started giving a ballet barre. I persuaded her to stay, to audition for a male part, and here she is, having rocked that audition with everything she had.) (Me, auditioning dancers! Talk about an about-face. Well, that’s another blog.)

In the front right of the staging studio sits, of course, a grand piano. The Maestro’s podium is next to it, centered with and facing the set. The Director’s stool is in front of the podium and slightly left. Then come two long tables with, in order, the Assistant Director, the Production Stage Manager, the two Assistant Stage Managers (stage right and stage left), and the Production Assistant. The Assistant Conductor/Chorus Master sort of nestles behind the long tables as space allows. I too kind of crouch on a back bench, dangerously close to Maestro’s baton. The Assistant Stage Managers run up and down the steps, near the edges where the wings will be, giving cues to the singers. (To the dancers too, but usually dancers are on top of when to enter.) It really is fascinating to watch. Opera at this level runs like a well-oiled machine. Folks are here to make the artists’ jobs easier.

Though foremost a performer, I love being on this side of the fourth wall. It is so satisfying for me to help the dancers integrate into the whole, to see them click into a moment and safely negotiate a stair or a spear or their spacing. I love taking notes and giving them later, working out and fine-tuning the rough spots, creating our own well-oiled machine.

Tomorrow is a blessed day off, though I will miss the dancers (and the production in general). Jack and I will venture out: to the coast, a vineyard, a small town…In the evening we’ll see Oregon Ballet Theatre perform. I bartered opera tickets for ballet tickets. I love this business.

What Counts

2008-04-20T12:55:00.002-05:00

I am in Portland, OR setting James’ choreography on the Portland Opera. They’re remounting the “Aida” production that JSB did with the MN Opera in 1998. I danced in that original cast. The production has been subsequently done numerous times, by other opera companies and with other dancers, here in the states and in Canada. This will be its last run, and I am thrilled and honored that the timing worked out so that I could be here. I am having the time of my life.

(I’m so lucky that I’ve been able to say that on so many occassions. It’s the healthy combination of work and fun that does it for me, the feeling that I’m contributing something valuable while living up to my potential and yet learning. Yep, that’s it.)

The JSB season ended with tears last Sunday (only a week ago!). They started to roll right after class onstage when James played Tori Amos during our five. But it was good, necessary to face the hard facts of a few more of us moving on. (Not me) I find that I am at a loss for sufficient words to talk about all the change. JSB is such a part of my DNA that ably articulating its dynamics and nuances is like trying to peel off my own skin: “ouch” and “impossible”. And so I’ll put that aside for now as I dive into this new project.

Every day I walk 25 minutes each way to and from the opera center. It’s right across the Willamette River from my hotel. If I had a rowboat I could get there in five minutes, but as it is I walk up 10 minutes to get to the nearest bridge then walk back down the other side. But it’s great, walking briskly in the perverse Portland weather that’s sunny one minute and hailing the next. It’s colder here now than in Minneapolis. Ironic, but who’s counting degrees?

I brought Geko (my cat) with me and so feel at my ease. She’s so happy here, despite the rather harrowing airport security check and the plane ride “under in the seat in front of me”. She wants to be with me more than anything and so settled right into our suite, checking out all the vantage points best suited to keeping tabs on me. Her green eyes look up at me with such love and trust (when she’s not sleeping).

Another pair of loving green eyes comes soon for a long weekend. Jack arrives Wednesday night, just in time to help me spend my first real day off in seventeen days! It doesn’t matter a bit what we do, though I would like to finally venture out and see this gorgeous part of the country.

When not at the opera center I’ve been “doing homework”. Alternating four DVD’s, I study the three scenes I’m responsible for, notating each dancer’s movements. This has taken hours and is really the only way to do it. Labanotation, the written recording method of dance, is absolutely impractical here (and I’d hazzard to say in general). It’s great for reviving something that’s been recorded thusly, but to recored a dance that way now ain’t gonna happen. And so I thank the universe for my laptop and my DVD’s. I study my 10-year-ago self and record my own counts. I study the 10 men (with spears!) and rewind until I can decipher what they’re doing: what’s in unison? what’s in cannon? what’s individual? (Men! Sloppy beasts!)

The wonen’s trio was a breeze. The music is countable in 8’s for one thing, so it was much more straightforward than the men’s priest scene with its 8, 12, 12, 6 and 10 that retards. That’s just their entrance.

Aside from pulling my hair out over this, I’ve gotten a perverse thrill from it all. This task has reminded me that I am capable and an able translator. The dancers and I have bonded over the counts, the juicy movement, our mutual desire for precision. When I came in February to audition these folks, I came away knowing that they would be good and able. They have exceded my hopes. They are tremendous dancers, and it’s because they’re such great people. Each one is a gem, an individual, a character, yet team players all. I couldn’t be happier with them. We are having so much fun! My heart swells.

Open

2008-03-14T18:50:00.001-05:00

It is the end of a long, hard week, and I am pleasantly exhausted. I could sleep for another week. However there are a lot things for which I must muster, not the least of which is JSB’s project with Uri Sands.

Uri’s choreography is beautiful. The steps are sliding, fluid, graceful even when reversing direction on a dime. The use of plie is so important. His work goes beyond groundedness; it turns over the rich soil.

I first worked with Uri in 2000 when he danced with JSB for a fall season. He started a project group a few years later, and when he launched his company, TU Dance, in 2005, I was in the inaugural concert.

Funny, that. It was such an honor to be there, but I was surprised to discover that I really struggled with the work. Granted, I missed some key rehearsals where some basic movement phrases were taught. And though I was taught the material by the other dancers, I didn’t learn it from the horse’s mouth, thus losing a generation in the translation. So when variations were created upon those main themes, I felt doubly underwater.

I remember also struggling with claiming space in the room. For pieces for which I was double cast, going over material on the side was barely an option in the oddly shaped U of M studio we were using. (A rehearsal space should be rectangular, like a stage!)

Then there were all my questions. I had a million of them, so many I didn’t know where to begin. “What angle, specifically, is that leg supposed to be on?” “What’s the motivating body part for that turn?” “What are the counts here?”…I was feeling in such a deficit learning-wise that all I could access were the tiny things, things I guess I felt I could hold on to. In retrospect, what I actually needed, what I eventually came around to grasping, was the gestalt. I lacked a big-picture understanding of what I was doing.

I ended up having a fine time performing. There were two weekends with chances at multiple pieces. It was an invaluable experience, and I think my dancing went to a deeper place. I was eventually able to find my voice within the work. It just took awhile, and for that I was disappointed.

I am happy to report that this time around, almost three years later, I am capturing the gestalt. I am discovering that my dancing has changed again. I am freer. I don’t hold on to and bare down on so many invisible safety nets. My plie is deeper. New chanels are open, and that includes in my brain and the way I am learning material. It is pouring into the top of my head out flowing out of my body. My skills certainly aren’t perfect, but they are closer to my potential than they were before, and for that I am so thankful.

Each day existing as a dancer is a real gift. Ours is such an ephemeral form that one must grasp periods of growth and success and utter thanks. (Like I thank my 37-year old body, and marvel that I am still learning and in many ways getting better!)

Next week with Uri will be hard and great I have no doubt. At the end of the process we’ll have two studio showings, but in a way they don’t matter. The gifts are already opening.

Commune

2008-02-24T16:59:00.001-06:00

JSB performed in Fergus Falls this Friday night, and I am reminded that it is a wonderful thing to connect with a community that’s different from one’s own.

We’ve been to Fergus many times over the years now. The downtown strip exudes small-town charm. The theater is on one side of the street and the dance school is on the other, ½ a block away and across the intersection.

The stage is a sort of subtle trapezoid shape, a former movie house I think, that still fulfills that use occasionally. We enter and exit through doorways instead of wings; upstage doorways also have stairs, a challenge in the dark.

But it is a pleasure to perform there, to engage with a community by doing what we do best. We also teach master classes (ballet, pointe, modern and jazz). James and I even made it to a party, a monthly potluck gathering of artists. In the warm and sturdy 1913 bungalow of metal sculptor Jeff, I felt as though I was in the right place at the right time. Warmed by wine and chili, I sat by the fire and communed.

My experience in Fergus goes deper still, as it was where I spent the last 2 weeks of August working on the magnificent original musical “Songs from the Tall Grass”. Because of my past connection to the place, I was hired to choreograph this newest installment of the show. I bonded so thoroughly with director/songwriter/co-author Randy that I became co-director. That buffalo of a man still resides in my heart, part of the permanent collection.

So Fergus goes deep. After the show there was a party across the street at a former hotel turned artist live/work residence. Such a valuable reuse of precious architecture. There I communed again as I caught up with “Songs” colleagues as well as Rebecca, Ramona and Mary, the folks who make it possible for us to be there.

We premiered a ballet, engaging with the community on yet another level as we required eight extras to fill out our cast. They did a superb job, especially after only three hours of rehearsal. I love seeing folks step up to the plate.

The next day I taught the last master class and headed home with Jack, his new painting freshly wet in the back. I love how we can simultaneously do our art then come together at the end of the day, (you guessed it) commune, then go for Dairy Queen. (MN must be the only state where at 35 degrees it feels like spring enough to want ice cream!)

Despite my ankle stress that occurred at some point on Friday night, I am thankful for all of it. The new scrape on my knee keeps me childlike. Hopefully it’ll heal in time for Rochester in two weeks. No matter, the battle wounds mean that I am doing battle.

2008-02-17T10:04:00.001-06:00

It’s almost a guarantee that in any given dance studio one can find a stray bobby pin. I love that this is the case. One never knows when one may need an extra, especially when one is growing one’s hair out like I am. (At least partially. It is a weird in-between length now, which is where my whole self has been since my last blog entry. I’ve been in a weird, in-between place.) But now I’m back.

I’ve missed this blog like a person. Indeed, the person I’ve missed is myself, my writing self, this self that got me through my divorce and then some. I’ve been so crazy busy there hasn’t been time to process, much less reflect upon it all. I can’t begin to catch up, so I will settle with starting from now, catching my own hand mid-air and guiding it gently down to earth where it belongs.

I’m reflecting these days on the concept of “career”, how I’ve managed to build one out of a ton of tiny parts, like a collage or a mural, tiny parts that add up to a big, beautiful thing. So many transitions are happening that it’s hard to keep track. Like how I am now Artistic Associate of JSB and am in a constant state of attempting to capture what that means exactly and how best to apply my energies. Like how I am now a published writer, writing the dance column for METRO Magazine, a newish Twin Cities publication that’s glossy and urban and where I have to assume my readership doesn’t know squat about dance so I have to be very clear and not very poetic. (Oh I know there’s a way to be both; it’s just not always apparent to me, and certainly not on a deadline.) Like how Justin is leaving the company after this season. Justin, who has been the subject of my fall, my partner in crime as we tumbled our way through Firebird with MN Orchestra and The Nutcracker in his Maryland hometown. I am not ready to face all the missing that’s going to happen there. And then there’s the departure of Gary Peterson, our Executive Director of almost 13 years, my lucky number. Again, a departure I am not ready to face, though it occurs next week.

That’s the thing about the collage-style career, it contains so many parts it’s hard to keep track. So many people and places and ballets coming and going that one wonders where the gib is, the steadfast force that keeps it all glued down.

It’s important, therefore, for me to blog, to string words together by way of record keeping if nothing else. These words tie me back to myself so that I can lean into the wind.

I determine to write more and to be less precious and precise. I will run-on a lot and I will forgive myself that. The point now is to just do it so that I can move on and not be stuck in this weird, in-between place. (Who know what I’ll end up doing with my hair? It really doesn’t matter… much.) It’s more like, what are all the strays doing at this moment? I don’t really want to pin them all down

Notes from the Joyce

2007-10-22T15:06:00.001-05:00

First off, it appears that it is confusing when sometimes I use names when referring to folks while at other times I use initials. From now on, in reference to James Sewell Ballet, I will name names. I get confused too. Hopefully this will help.

The Weekend

With five shows in three days and a mother in town, there’s little time left for recording thoughts. Instead of a blow by blow, here’s the gestault…

The weekend was great. There’s something superhero-like about dancing when you’re tired yet profoundly in shape. The body learns to count on its capacity to conserve and then serve-up when necessary. How smart.

I had friends in the audience for nearly every show. Michael came on Friday, then went out with all of us. An ex-boyfriend turned old friend, our first date was supposed to have been seeing Feld at the Joyce. Their curtain got damaged in a flood and operations closed down, at least for that show. James had left the company by then anyway, (about 1991) but I like the near-connection nevertheless.

Saturday night brought Anna and Griff. Anna danced with us for three or four years. She remains a gem in my heart, allowing me to crash their wedding last May, and taking me in for a week last summer (as newlyweds!) while I went to another wedding and attended a Robert Battle workshop. So good to catch up with Anna, to laugh like we used to, especially on tour.

After the matinee on Sunday I was surprised by Jacques, a new friend, met at a Dance Critics Association conference held over a weekend in June in NYC. We had a quick lunch and coffee then went our separate ways with the promise of staying in touch. A former Erick Hawkins dancer and dance historian, he was able to give honest, lucid and imaginative feedback on the show. What a gift; I’m looking forward to sharing that with James. The best piece was when he said it was clear that James has been careful about what he’s built. He is not a flash-in-the-pan choreographer breezing into NY. He’s instead bringing what he’s steadily built: a company of dancers increasingly adept at his “style” and who are able to portray their respective humanities onstage.

Sunday night was probably our fullest house of the run. For the Joyce’s 25th anniversary, they are selling all Sunday PM shows for $25. We needed that extra audience energy. Out with a bang.

Gorged at Italian place in celebration. Moved on to another diner/bar in the meat packing district with friends John and Denis in tow. Again, so gratifying for me to merge worlds. Integration: body, soul and friends.

Throughout I talked to boyfriend. (New cell phone good.) From afar I felt healing comfort without weirdness or weird relying.

We returned today pleasantly exhausted and looking forward to resting. We open this coming weekend for our season here. We’ll be ready.

So the upshot is: this is a great group. Each dancer is magnificent and singular. We are all indeed human. We can act out, but we also come together and do great things, like cause Denis to “walk on air” for the whole next day after seeing us.

We can contain it all, all the quirks and setbacks and then inevitable successes and wins. That’s what it’s all about: performance as process, company as process. It’s all there, here.

Notes from the Joyce

2007-10-19T15:58:00.000-05:00

Thursday

I just had the best shower since I’ve been here: consistently warm, full, heavy stream, long. But I get ahead of myself. It is actually Friday, and I’m having breakfast. Here’s what happened yesterday…

I opted to not take class with Gelsey in the AM. My calf greeted me with the promise of trouble ahead if I overdid things. I didn’t want to sit out of more jumps, or make the concrete trek uptown and back for that matter. So I went to the theater early to warm myself up. J and C were there too. A good, bonding time in the little studio below the stage.

Our review came out in the NY Times. It started off well (and with a beautiful picture), but then took a turn for the not-so-hot. And then the kicker: wrong information. E was said to have lip-synched her song Lonely House in Opera Moves. Oh, she absolutely does sing this one. Boy, that’s a piece of factual info that is so easy to access (by actually reading the program) that my burgeoning critical heart hurts. How easy it is to get a thing wrong, and cause frustrating upset if not outright damage. The upshot is that our press agent was contacted and she secured a retraction, to be published Saturday. That’s great, but to me the main point is bigger and even harder to bear: the fact that the critic did not seem to care enough to fact check properly. Which means that he didn’t really care about the show. Which means that his heart did not open. He did not allow the singularity of the company to seep into his bones. He did not absorb the fact that, yes indeed, we have a magnificent dancer in our midst who does indeed sing as well as dance, and that James created a special solo to accommodate that. The critic did not serve as our advocate, or an advocate for dance in general, and it hurts my heart.

Well, E blew the folks out of the theater last night. Her song was deep and warm and indeed lonely. She played with the timing, made different and stunning choices with her phrasing, and I was rivited in the wings. Turning poison into medicine, that girl (woman) is wise.

It was like the audience in general rallied toward us in the dark. They were so present for every section of Opera Moves. They seemed to dare the critic to stand behind his shallow words. He’s swallowing (at least some of) them now.

Again, I get ahead of myself. In the afternoon, after our rehearsal for a ballet in next week’s Saint Paul show, I had a late lunch with my old friend/boss/mentor Eliza. The inventor of the Gaynor Minden Pointe Shoe, she is a gem of a human. We had such a good talk, about things personal and dance-related, that I was again struck at how rich it all is, my life and the folks in it. Her anecdote on the privledge of directing Melissa Hayden in a photo shoot to promote the shoe was hilarious, as well as a testament to that amazing creature, the ballerina. I feel as though I’m not made of the same materials as the Melissa Haydens of this world. Well, whatever I’m made of, I’m well-worn with gratitude for the privilege of inhabiting a small corner of this crazy niche market.

Another cat nap. N and I wound our way to the theater. My mother appeared, just in from Charleston, and delivered merde gifts for the company: awesome slippers from some remote neighborhood of Queens. I love my burgundy chinoiserie ones. J hilariously pranced around in his baby blue fuzzy ones, his heels hanging 2” off the back. E and N did a lip-synching duet. I love these folks.

So then the show ( I fell in Schoenberg Serenade! I fell at the Joyce!) S did a little touch-down too, in sympathy and solidarity. Ah, friend.

Afterward there was a party in a restaurant uptown. Fantastic food, friends. A former dancer with the company, J, was there. I knocked on the window in greeting. He beckoned me inside; my heart swelled to overflowing to see him. He radiates happiness and himness. From him I learn the lesson of being utterly myself, no matter what. (I send a mental thanks to new boyfriend, with whom I can be, and am, myself.)

Heading in to the weekend. Five shows in three days. Onward.

Notes from the Joyce

2007-10-18T09:59:00.000-05:00

Wednesday

Began the day taking class from Gelsey again. My body felt the need to get physical early, to warm and rev, before company class at 5:00.

She is an excellent teacher. It doesn’t always translate, a great dancer becoming a great teacher. But in this case, and to my surprise, it has.

My calf strain is still with me. I’m not worried per se, but it’s a new negotiation. I didn’t do the super quick small jumps. I hate not doing everything in a class, especially this very special one, but the priority must be the show and how to responsibly prepare for it.

I spent the rest of the day with the show ahead a constant in my mind. I bumped into K and had lunch; nice to catch up with my old friend. Found great bargans at the nearby Salvation Army thrift store. Phone calls, another cat nap, another coffee, headed to the theater.

Class on stage. Oh those slippery spots. Well, I know where they are. K worked on my calf. Made-up, costumed, I decided I’d be fine. Indeed I was. The show was good. C’s solo in Opera Moves was the best ever. Proud of him. Again, felt the audience respond after each section as the lights faded. We threaded the needle again.

Notes from the Joyce

2007-10-17T14:05:00.000-05:00

Tuesday

I am in the middle of our day. So far we have had: class, dress rehearsal, a photo shoot, and notes. Now we are breaking, for about an hour and a half, before we have class again and open this week of shows. I’m getting excited. Today’s dress went well enough for me to feel better about the show than I’ve been feeling, but not so well that I’m suspicious. (Never good to have too good of a dress.) I am at peace with my costumes, my body, my new calf strain. Already today I’ve received a gift backstage and flowers, plus several well-wishing emails. My community surrounds me, near and far.

So now a cat nap, a change of wardrobe, a pre-show coffee. (I’ll save merde cards for another night.) Looking forward to the champagne reception after the show. Looking forward to the show. Looking forward…

After

The magic of this company never ceases to surprise me. The show was beautiful.

James’ solo was exciting in all its raw newness. He looked deep in his legs, solid on the ground.

The second piece, Schoenberg Serenade, had gotten most of the kinks out in the afternoon. For the most part, we were able to bravely tackle our highly technical requirements with artistry and animation. My solo went pretty well. I was happy with it, though it wasn’t perfect. It rarely is, with its extremely technical quirkiness en pointe. I use the shoes in all possible ways, from cocking my feet and turning with bent knees, to balancing doubled-over in a parallel sous-sous and rising to upright, hands flexed above my head.

After intermission came Opera Moves, our final offering. Many sections long, we each get a chance to shine. The opening section, an new, inherited part for me, went the best it’s ever gone. J and I finally figured out how to negotiate our arms prior to a tricky turn. We nailed it. I also promenaded in arabesque steadily; this is generally hit-or-miss. I heard the audience breathe a collective sigh as the lights lowered after that section. Satisfying.

My duet with S also went well. Some tricky partnering here too, this time en pointe. I screwed up some steps by myself, but at least not at her expense. I’ll figure that out before the next show. But the gestault of the thing was there, in full force. We were giddy with pleasure in dancing with one another; she’s intoxicating.

The final section has us all re-emerging, morphing characters we’ve just portrayed. We also borrow from one another, both in movement and in costumes. I get to wear one of the romantic tutus, still with the wreath in my hair from my dance with S. I look like a girlish Puck. My final moments, back with J, are indeed fairy-like and drowsy.

Old friends in the lobby. Champagne. Dinner in groups. Combining new and old. Life is full and rich and good. Solid again now that I know what this particular show’s about. Until tomorrow…

Notes from the Joyce

2007-10-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

James Sewell Ballet is performing at the Joyce this week in NYC. After a minor flight set-back last night, we arrived safe and sound in our new digs: the dorms of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church. My room is about 9’x9’, shared with N. We have a sink. Clean showers and toilets are down the hall. I’m actually used to it already. Hey, it’s three blocks away from the theater, and we’re never there anyway. Twin beds make for cozy comfort.

Monday

Took morning class w/ Gelsey Kirkland, one of the most famous ballerinas of all time. She’s subbing for David Howard at Steps this week.

Going to Steps for class is always a production: getting uptown, waiting for the puny elevator, lining up to pay for class ($15 pro-rate!), negotiating cramped dressing-room quarters and bathroom stalls. This is just the preliminary. Once in the studio the space negotiation continues. Barres usually have a couple people too many. Hands vie for just the right spot. Angles are compromised. A view in the mirror is fleeting.

Today, however, the class was blessedly not over-crowded; it even dwindled as dancers had to leave early for respective rehearsals. I felt “in-body”, comfortable, relatively myself. I decided in advance not to take center en pointe. Good to remove a level of stress, especially since I had company class again later anyway.

The theater greets me like an old friend. This time, however, I find that I am on slightly different terms with it. I have a different spot in the dressing room, and I’m finding the floor to be slippery. Good to know. Tomorrow I will know what to anticipate, what to “get over” fear-wise.

All my dancing for this show feels delicate, as in threading a needle just so. I feel as though I have less room for error than usual. And yet at the end of the day, if I’ve done well, I am so self-satisfied. And so I buckle down my mind to do my utmost-best. (But there’s the catch, I don’t want to buckle down my mind at all. I want to free it, along with my heart, to pierce the core of the moment. To thread the needle of the moment, not just of the dance.)

The last rehearsal of the day had me watching James’new solo. It’s been fun and an honor, to weigh-in on my director’s latest effort for himself. I feel as though I’ve been helpful, if only in a moral support kind of way. But no, I’ve helped physically too, with a deepening of a plie here and an inserted jump there.

I wind down with dinner with an old friend, then calls to my mom and boyfriend. Shower, chat with N, book, bed. Tomorrow, we open.

Opening Night

2007-08-02T10:05:00.001-05:00

My new piece for the Fringe opens tonight. It’s called “We’ll Survive if We Don’t Protect Ourselves”, and it’s taken on a new and more immediate meaning in light of yesterday’s tragedy here in Minneapolis.

Driving to rehearsal @ 6:34, I saw an ambulance crossing the river, speeding down Broadway. I turned before we crossed paths.

When I arrived at my venue, a public building, folks were outside, talking on their cells and smoking, not a particularly unusual sight. But then I heard the news. We plugged in a radio and got on our phones.

I’ve worked/rehearsed during tragedy before. It’s true what they say, “The show must go on.” (Though on 9/11 you can better believe I holed up at home, my mom having been at the Towers. (She’s fine.)) We had to get to work; I had to finish the piece, for one thing. The costumes needed a final nod, and a photographer was coming. And so we proceeded, and stuff was different. The irony and bitter truth of my pithy title hit me hard. What began as a an abstract and even lofty notion quickly turned concrete, tons and tons of it.

And yet the work I do is the best thing I can do to deal with something indigestable and impossible to articulate. To me, it is the highest honor I can pay. And perhaps by witnessing it, folks can have some sort of catharsis. We certainly do, dancing it.

As I undergo my final preparations for tonight (costume laundering, ironing and repair, picking up programs, loading in chairs, picking up folks from the airport, rehearsing), I think about grace. I think about my immensely fortunate life. I am reminded to not take it for granted. My show will indeed go on. This magnificent festival will go on, more needed than ever, more capable than ever of creating community.

O'er the Ramparts

2007-07-05T14:42:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was July 4th. I had a late-night gathering at my place to watch the fireworks. My balcony hosts the most perfect view. Like a television screen, the sky/skyline layed itself out before our group. We counted the seconds between seeing a blast and hearing it. I counted myself lucky.

One year ago I moved into my apartment. On the 4th I had rehearsal, then went to the beach. In the evening, however, I had no plans, and so surrounded by boxes, I proceeded to unpack.

In the midst of setting up my new life, the fireworks began. I went out onto my balcony and discovered this most perfect view. I watched in awe, a tiny lump in my throat. Here was a city-wide Declaration of my Independence. My night was meant to be spent alone, to settle a contract with myself, setting myself free.

Last night I marveled at all the change. Watching from the exact same spot as last year, this time I shared it with friends, old and new. It was a grounded gathering, despite the 3rd floor location and the rush to get home to welcome folks.

The lump in my throat returned. Fireworks do that to me anyway, but this time it was for all kinds of reasons. My mind scanned past July 4th celebrations. Mostly I conjured ones from when I was in high school; lots of memories from being away at dance camps. (Maybe because I just re-watched “Dirty Dancing”.)

During my summers in NYC there was always an adventure. We always got the day off from dancing. The first year my mom and I hooked up with other misplaced Ohioans in the big city. (One girlfriend went to SAB while I went to Joffrey.) I think we watched fireworks from the roof of our ladies residence.

My second NY summer I spent the 4th with my boyfriend from home (again, he was at SAB while I returned to Joffrey) and another dancing friend who came to visit for the occasion. We sprawled out in Central Park before I knew the lay of that land. I think we caught some fireworks. I mostly remember being sort of sad. I had fallen in love with my partner at Joffrey and didn’t know how to negotiate that at 16. Dance and love became a jumbled, incompatible mix.

The next year I’m pretty sure I spent the 4th on Long Island with the aforementioned Joffrey partner. That summer I questioned everything dance related. It was the beginning of a year-long seeking, certainly the darkest period of my life up to then. I became an other-self. I stopped taking class. My body drastically changed. It was like I forgot how to dance. I lost sight of my worth in relation to dance and probably in general. But I’m convinced that my relationship to my form would not be as solid as it is today if I had not undergone the trials of that year. I still may skip class or rant against pointe shoes, but I can do these things because my commitment to dance is solid. Dance and I are mates for life.

Funny to recall that dark year. Reminds me of the one I just had: divorcing, moving, contemplating relocating, and falling in love. And like that other one, this past year has solidified my commitment to myself and my happiness. I am truly strong, bending with the winds of change, but never breaking. My new relationship is healthy as can be. I used this year of trauma and change to put these things into effect, to lower the ramparts that I built between dance and love.

I am seeing now instead of constantly searching, an acute distinction. I feel no qualms about loving and dancing. I can contain all the disparate parts and output things worthy, artful and valuable.

Watching the fireworks last night, memories flooded. A strong and gentle hand caressed my back, and I felt peace in my newly-coupled independence.

The Elephant in the Room

2007-06-13T16:58:00.001-05:00

Haven’t written in eons. Summer slipped into me like a foot into a comfortable shoe, and I’ve been down with that since our dancing season ended. Yet to justify my existence, here’s what I’ve been up to:

-Performed for Deborah Jinza Thayer’s Movement Architecture at Gallery 13 in NE Minneapolis
-Completed and shepherded to the stage my portion of “Strange Attractor” (a combined effort with Wynn Fricke) for Springboard, the performing group of the Dance Institute of MN Dance Theatre
-Went to Duluth to create a new dance on the advanced students of MN Ballet
- Helped rehearse and tech “Brahms Duet”, Sally’s affecting dance with Mariusz for Strictly Ballroom’s fundraiser at the Southern
-Took a Master Class with Italian choreographer Emio Greco at The Walker. Came away with the title for my Fringe show
-Picked up fellow JSB dancer from double knee surgery. It was an honor to be privy to post-surgery stupor, gradual lucidity, extreme pain, and funny stoicism
-Had in-grown toenail “minor surgery”
-Went to Duluth to see my new piece performed. So amazing to leave it as a rough sketch and return to watch it sparkling onstage. Hiked 5.2 miles of the Superior Hiking Trail (in my new trail running shoes!)
-Accepted job offer to choreograph and assistant direct an original musical, “Songs From The Tall Grass”, to open in Fergus Falls and modestly tour
-Met new nephew. He gazed at me with clear eyes at only 30 hours old
-Traveled to Charleston, SC to visit my mom and other family. Attended three Spoleto performances, including Batsheva Dance Company
-Substitute taught a number of classes at a wonderful dance school “in the burbs”

And all the while:

-Took Pilates, yoga, the occassional ballet class
-Finished up my weekly Tuesday evening teaching gig (Pillar, Linda and Monica are high school, rockstar, actual people, not just bunheads)
-Contemplated, conceived and began Fringe piece, “We’ll Survive If We Don’t Protect Ourselves” (secured venue and dates, hired dancers, researched music, made flier…)
-Saw 15 performances of dance and theater, one movie on the big screen, and numerous rented, libraried, and netflixed films (moslty old)

The elephant in the room:

-There’s a new significant other in my life

So all this stuff has been shared, supported. At the end of most days, either in person or on the phone, I’ve intermingled the adventures of my life with that of another. Mutual support through sustained, ongoing, never-ending conversations. As I’ve continued to healthily let go of J, to hang on to the good stuff and shed the unnecessary, not helpful stuff, I continue to uncover my pagoda.

(One of the national leaders of the lay organization affiliated with my Buddhist practice talks about the initial necessity of a scaffolding surrounding her pagoda: her best self. The scaffolding represents her responses to fears, “negative” tendencies, things she actually has needed to get through the burden of life. A scaffolding allows us to make a thing better, stronger, more lasting. But there comes a time when the scaffolding, in place for so long, starts to get in the way. It shrouds our true selves, our pagodas, and hinders our progress as humans. And so a shedding must occur. In my case, it’s a gradual process. One aspect that feels important is that I’ve allowed others to help me. And instead of feeling weakened by this, I feel fortified, strengthened. Not to say that my pagoda is perfect or finished. It’s simply out in the open now, enjoying the sun.)

Through this process of re-entering significant-otherness, I put into practice all that I’ve learned. All my painful experiences (and wonderful ones) add up to me being able to approach another person better.

I slide my newly exposed pagoda-self into this new relationship like summer slipped into me. I contemplate this new significant other in my life and wonder at all the possibility. Sweet drips down my chin like from a fresh strawberry, yet I risk getting seeds in my teeth and juice on my white shirt. But the important thing is that I risk. Again. My risking is hard-earned. There’s a new openheartedness, and life’s ripe with the possibility of it making a difference.

Company

2007-04-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

We of James Sewell Ballet are in the midst of our spring season, our last series of performances this contract period. We are dancing again at the beautiful new Guthrie McGuire Theater, the red walls of which evoke drama on an operatic scale, perfect for this particular program.

Balanchine’s “Tarantella” opens. A duet from the ‘60’s, it is danced here by Brittany and Nic. They are charming in this warhorse. They have risen to the occasion, certainly earning tamborine rights. How silly, how sweet, and sometimes even sexy. I watch as I warm up, sure to catch my favorite moments, reveling on their behalf in the applause that follows each section. They’re on my team, and we’re winning.

They pass the baton to James and Sally who perform next in “Late”. This duet is charm of another sort. It is a fashionable, quirky cartoon, beginning and ending with a bang.

Then on to Jennifer Hart’s magnificent “LightSpace”. We are pleased that this is part of our program. Utterly challenging technically, it’s also a spatial puzzle, requiring a threading-of-the-needle accuracy that thrills in its split-secondness.

The second half of the show is James’ extended version of “Opera Moves”. This piece is largely sectional, mostly solos and duets, so we get to watch one another when we’re not busy changing costumes. This watching, this supporting from the wings, is the closest thing to unconditional love I can think of. And it is during this watching that my heart swells, recognizing the admiration and support we all feel for and from one another. We go from wing to wing, keeping up with the action, waiting for that great joke or promise of an astounding turn. Onstage to off, it is mutual, shared, sacred.

We are losing one of our ranks after this weekend. Brittany has taken a job with American Repertory Ballet in New Jersey. Her going is a multi-loss to me; she is colleague, friend, mentor, sister.

I’ve danced in this company long enough to have experienced many such losses. Each is singular in the specificity of feeling, and yet there’s a sameness about the ritual: people move on. I’ve moved on too, just with and alongside the company. Each of us requires something different. Some of us stay longer than others. Yet whatever our personal equation, for the time we are together, for the duration, we are solidly one. We are many and we are one, fulfilling our respective missions as we attempt to propel James’ forward.

We are team JSB, clad in mostly unitards with an occasional tutu or hat. We are company, collection, menagerie, an island of misfits. We come together to practice our unique dance. We laugh endlessly and cry occasionally. There’s sweat, blood, frustration in the extreme. But at the end of a long night of performing we stand in a single line and bow to people clapping. I can tell you there’s nothing better, and it’s not only because of the claps. It’s also the certainty of pride that I feel when I look on either side of me and see these friends, these artists, and that I can lay claim to being in their good company.

Fly Spring

2007-03-20T14:15:00.001-05:00

Want to set a few thoughts down…

As I near the end of my thirteenth season with James Sewell Ballet, I am taking stock, and I find that I am happy. Recently, amid massive internal inquiry and indecisiveness about my dancing future, not to mention all the shit re: my divorce, I’ve remained grounded; I’ve been joyful even. I’ve decided to stay.

(Re: the “shit of my divorce”, I mean it like fertilizer. I’ve mined the process for all it was worth to emerge the person I always knew I could be. My heart thanks J, for having the forethought to make a brave choice for both of us. As horribly unilateral as it was, I know it to be the right thing. All my solidity proves that. I’m solid in a fluid sense, like how bamboo can bend with the wind but not break. I now know how to be vulnerable, what a gift.)

On this first day of spring I am reminded that I’ve never felt quite settled about spring’s arrival. It always makes me a little sad, even though winter’s no picnic. (Love those blizzards though, and the ready excuse for a fire.) I don’t know, all this sudden openness is maybe too much too soon. Maybe I’m not quite ready to abandon the cocoon that I’ve surrounded myself with over these dark months. Maybe it’s that I feel too much pressure, to rejoin the human race and my community. Maybe it’s that all this lingering light hits my windows at odd hours, and I see how dirty they are. I hate to clean, and yet I know it feels so good once it’s done.

Soon my balcony will once again be like another room of my cozy apartment. I’ll be able to hear the church bells without straining my ears. My cat will meow to go out and I’ll let her, chaperoned of course.

And then there’s my dancing. Our season ends with a kick-ass piece by Jennifer Hart that’s challenging me both athletically and balletically. And then in James’ expanded “Opera Moves” I get to dance duets with Sally and Nic. Playing two different characters that morph into one at the end, the parallel to my own recent experience is not lost on me.

Today I conclude that life is good. I love it for what it is: hard, bewildering, fraught with alarming things. It also offers so many moments of grace I can’t begin to count them; I wouldn’t want to try.

Today I am at peace with this mystery that is life. Perhaps some things are not meant to be fully grasped. Holding a thing down may change its nature, its it-ness. I remember early on in our breakup being hit with the notion that I had to let J go in order for him to maintain his J-ness. And low and behold, in that letting go, I’ve allowed myself to fly. Not that occassionally I won’t need to return to my cocoon. I know I will, perhaps even later today. For the most part I am untethered; no strings attached.

After Beauty

2007-03-19T18:21:00.000-05:00

I….. saw…..Forsythe….

I am still seeing. I am marked.

Sometimes a thing is so beautiful it’s hard to look at. That’s how it was with “Quintett”. The last piece on the program, I had so far “kept up” with what was on view. The three works before intermission were astounding, graceful, hard-edged when necessary, sometines audible, always beautiful.

And then there was “Quintett”. Some works of art reach all the way through and touch my spine. Afterward I didn’t really want to talk, certainly not about that. How can words dare to aptly express, except to utter thanks?

Earlier this week Sally wrote a comment sharing with us her “audition” for Forsythe. It was the underbelly of the experience. At the end she talked about her level of bravery at the time, and that it wasn’t enough.

I can safely say, and from deep experience alongside her, that Sally’s heart is one of the bravest I know. That she stood in the seats last night, with “Quintett” just quietly gone, crying, was the bravest act I could imagine in that moment. Vulnerability and feeling deeply are fierce qualities. These shape us to be the artists that we are.

Sometimes Sally’s dancing is so beautiful it hurts. It’s different from what I saw last night, but similar in that she is so utterly herself. That’s the bottom line to me. Is the person dancing authentically them?

Each Forsythe dancer operates from this angle. They struck me foremost as humans, then dancers. That is the correct heirachy as far as I’m concerned. There was no façade, just graceful inquiry and then an outpouring of sharing.

I am inspired, but it’s far away, not needing or wanting to take a specific shape just yet. I don’t need to run to Frankfurt to learn how to dance like this. I am so thankful to have seen, to still see, and to get to dance today myself.

What Lingers (as seen on the Walker Art Center blog)

2007-03-13T23:54:00.000-05:00

Dana Casperson is articulate in every way. Verbally, physically, and I can only guess, emotionally. The following are my thoughts about today’s master class and discussion later with James Sewell.

Dana generates movement from her hips. Teeny-tiny, she is larger than life when she dances. She tells us to think of the body like a snake. A snake cannot move without bringing its whole self along. As dancers we can think of our bodies in the same way. Any gesture contains the potential to become a full-body experience/expression. As classical ballet practicioners, we tend to isolate movements. They are always living, just often internally. Here, today, it’s like she’s telling us to show the work.

She tells us to think of approaching points on a three-dimensional grid. One can approach with any part of the body. Here’s the thing though, how can you get from point A to point B intelligently, without it being a non sequitur? What is the priority, the imperative, and what must be abandoned out of necessity?

“Leave something behind”, she tells us. Move like a wave that simultaneously regenerates even as it breaks/arrives. I am reminded of a lotus flower, simultaneously blossoming and seeding, cause and effect existing simultaneously.

My brain fries. A part of me wants to physically experience this stuff, and I must admit, a part of me simply, complexly, wants to watch. I want to write, to experience this work from the inside of my own brain, grasping what precious little I can in two hours. It’ll be interesting to see what lingers.

I wrestle between my brain and my instincts, a hyper, encapsulated experience.

Ultimately dance is about the expression of the spirit.

It’s important to allow the head to fulfill the chain of events promised by the body.

I close my eyes and imagine myself in my grid. I sense my backspace and all the possibility. This gives me hope, in my dancing and in my life in general. I think this grid of possibility can apply to all we approach as humans. Adding focus, we follow the head. And for me, (I sense this with Dana too), I follow the heart and its sincere pursuit, to wherever it may quietly lead, often with surprising results.

My Naive Impressions of the Forsythe Method (as seen on the Walker Art Center blog)

2007-03-10T10:34:00.000-06:00

My first viewing of a Forsythe piece was when I was fifteen. I was in New York City with my mother and best friend, auditioning for the Joffrey Ballet School summer program. The Joffrey, still magnificent in 1986, before it crusted over and moved to Chicago, was performing at the State Theater at Lincoln Center. One of the works on the mixed-bill was “Love Songs”. I was blown out of the water of my Dayton, Ohio existence. Now that I think about, I’m sure that that night, that viewing, affected my choreographic aesthetic, especially regarding male/female partnering. Those duets were fierce and borderline abusive. And so beautiful in their danger. I think it was the first time I had ever seen juxtaposition.

When I was twenty and living in NYC, San Francisco Ballet came to town and performed Forsythe’s “In the middle, somewhat elevated”. I remember loving the costumes, the hats in particular, I guess you could say the general aesthetic. At the time, I did not know how to critique work, how to talk about what I was seeing. Now I know that I was absorbing, taking in, educating my eye. Then, I just knew that I think I liked it.

Cut to Minneapolis. A few years into my tenure with James Sewell Ballet, my friend Christian Burns spent a chunk of time in Germany with Ballett Frankfurt, William Forsythe’s home base at the time. Upon his return he told me all about it, over several long conversations. It was clear that Chris’ dancing life had been deeply affected. It remains clear that that affect has remained. His experience was deep and rich and had something to do with a dance phrase called “tuna”.

Near that same time, during a summer visit back in NYC, my mom and I were at the Whitney Museum. I found myself in a darkened theater. A film of a dancer was playing. Somehow I knew it was Bill Forsythe. I was captivated. Again, I didn’t really know what I was seeing, how to relate his dance to my daily practice of the form. I love how dance can still surprise me.

Through James Sewell Ballet I got to know a long-time Forsythe dancer, Noah Gelber. An old friend of Sally’s, he visited one fall season and performed a solo on our show. The swinging light enchanted me, as did his magnificent dancing, his layers of socks, his sense of humor.

The summer of 1997 I was in Paris and saw Noah with the company. They danced a piece called “Sleepers Guts”. My boyfriend’s father and my mother fell asleep. My boyfriend and I sat with eyes wide open on our little bench seats in the rafters of the theater, I forget which one. The piece had text, live video, and kick-ass dancing. It defied categorization.

Noah visited Minneapolis again several years later, after he’d left the company. He gently led us through a mini workshop/explanation of just a few of Forsythe’s improvisational methods. We barely scratched the surface.

So here I find myself at the heart of these residency activities. I look forward to getting confused, drudging up questions and my shit. Maybe I’ll have a break-through. Maybe I’ll break. However it goes down, I’m ready to be surprised.

Penelope Freeh – barefootpenny.blogspot.com

Anonymous

2007-02-19T15:43:00.001-06:00

I recently read an incredible book: “A Woman in Berlin – Eight Weeks in the Conquered City” by Anonymous, a female journalist and editor during and after World War II. She was 33 when she wrote it..

The book is in diary form, and captures the intimate details of her experience in Berlin just after Hitler fell, and Russia’s Red Army took over the city. Almost immediately we are matter-of-factly privy to the bare-boned facts of her new life, consisting mostly of incessant rape. It was a matter of course, and through the course of the book, it comes to be laughed at, even bragged about.

I feel a kinship with this woman. Nine months into my crumbled marriage, I find that I too can laugh about my tragedy. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s so very sad, and I need an outlet. Laughter in this case expresses irony and something broader, too spread out for words. The emotion that needs to get out requires something gutteral.

I spent three weeks absorbing her words, and over sixty years later I instinctively echo many of her sentiments. She has become a sort of time-capsule heroine: an astute, dry, brilliant, funny, savvy, curious, diligent, poetic recorder of her time spent losing, literally, the ground under her feet.

Near the end of the account, the author finds herself face to face with her fiancee, a man she had given up for dead. He is appalled by how she’s changed, in appearance, but most of all in manner and conversation. Almost nothing is sacred to her anymore, or at least, in the same ways. “You’ve lost all sense of measure”, he tells her.

Here’s what she has to say: “Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again, I would always be anxious, could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.

“Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling…I’m… an ordinary laborer…All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. Still, the dark and amazing adventure of life is beckoning. I’ll stick around, out of curiousity and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.”

I too am at a phase regarding love where I wonder, I really question, if I’m capable of the fullness of it in the presence of my art. I feel my dance calling, and I will admit that sometimes, when my soul is truly touched, it is enough.

So I ask, is my divorce, that which was imposed upon me, something I wanted all along? Clearly I inadvertently yet subversively made noises to that effect. I engaged in the action of getting married then proceeded to continue to put my art first. And yet, that’s where it is. That’s where it is.

I reach out, way out in the world, my feelers extended, information gathering. But I know the truest work needs to get done right here in my own backyard. I, in my ruby slippers, need to excavate my heart from the rubble, and unearth my true nature. Bits of me are revealing themselves. I reconstruct, reglue. My shards become hairline cracks, barely discernable to my naked eye, yet their history is no less keenly felt. Can my new container hold water? My friend S and I are reassured by that Leonard Cohen lyric, “There’s a crack in everything…that’s how the light gets in.”

Anonymous: “At times I think I could survive anything on earth, as long as it came from without and not from some devious trick of my own heart.”

Yes. I am unearthing that the more I am true to myself, the more I can withstand. My sharpest pain comes from self-deception, distortion, like the view in a fun-house mirror.

I spent a large part of my marriage waiting/wanting to be asked to put aside, at least for awhile, my dancing and all attached dreams. I was nearing readiness for just that. I was nearing readiness to get pregnant, to rearrange my everything. So when it all came crashing down, my soul whiplashed, and is still out of joint, stretched out, like a belly after a late-term miscarriage.

The truth is, the divorce propelled me toward divining what it is I really want now. While I do want to have a child, I know I don’t quite yet. And anyway, it is not enough to wait to be asked. That decision requires an internal shift of my priorities, an internal “yes”. It starts with me.

These are things that I want. I want to believe wholeheartedly in my ability to love (and be loved) sustainably and to do it well. I want to have a child. And, yes, I want to be connected to dance throughout. But until then…

…there is no longer another person between my heart and I. I am no longer distracted by trying to please, or pretending to be something I’m not. How fortunate that I did not get pregnant, that I did not put my artistic dreams on hold. It would’ve all been for the wrong reason: fear. There lies the way of distortion. I was waiting to be asked, and that never would have have happened. When the time comes, I must wholeheartedly ask it of myself.

Me and my heart…

She says of hers, “Maybe we’ll find our way back to each other yet. And maybe my heart will speak to me once more. One thing’s for sure: my life has certainly been full…”

My heart slowly reveals itself to me, emerging from the shadows of anonymity. My wants can all exist at once, I just need to be able to contain them, cracks notwithstanding.

Near Miss

2007-01-26T08:27:00.000-06:00

(In reference to Sunday January 21, 2007)

I am alone onstage, behind the curtain. The call is seven minutes before the top of the show. “Chair Bones” is first, and I am dancing it today. I am costumed, shod, feeling thin (enough) and on my leg. Today I can almost feel my center.

I stand en pointe behind the chair, holding it for support, testing my balance in soussus. S wanders onstage asking if I need anything. Just to drill a few steps, the ones I’m still uncertain about or that require a practice run. Already this morning I have marked through the dance in my apartment so as to gain total comfort with the music. The music, above all, is how I’ve hooked in to this piece. I want to know exactly where I am in it so that I can be free to make intelligent, informed phrasing choices.

The company gathers for circle onstage, our pre-show ritual. S reads a poem, leaving me blessed and with permission to be ugly. Holding hands, we encircle the chair, close our eyes, and hook into the collective that is JSB. The last show of our run, we are tired and warm.

I think about how I felt just over a week ago as I set out to perform this piece for the first time in California. Then I was slightly underwater, wading. Today I am walking on water; I am ready.

The dance begins and I am in control. I am at once engaged and detached. I am grounded and I am above, looking down on myself, my choices, and on what happens as a result of momentum and gravity.

The company watches from the wings. They surround and buoyantly support. I have strength and stamina. My shoes are hanging in there, softly supportive too. I remember all the steps. I successfully negotiate and manipulate the chair.

Today’s small audience is somewhat disappointing, but I remember that it is ultimately not for them. This whole shebang that is dance in my life is for me, my gift to myself. I love sharing it with others, but really it is mine. And that’s what makes it so hard. Because on days when I can’t or don’t “get it up” no one really cares. Sometimes no one even knows, but I do, and at the end of the day, I remember.

I leave “Chair Bones” now. The final two performances of it on tour will be danced by B and E, respectively magnificent, coming into their own and in their own ways. I’m sure the music will continue to play in my head.

I miss. I have relief. I hum. I do and I don’t want to see the DVD of my performance. Until I do I replay the film in my head: reliving, reviving, retreiving, recovering. It is still near enough to touch.

It Makes Me Happy

2007-01-19T22:46:00.000-06:00

It makes me happy to take River Road to the theater these days. I resolve to take it more often…in keeping with my general resolve to slow down.

It makes me happy that I sat with myself today. (Again with that slowing down thing.) I and my internal meltdown did battle, and the good guy won. It was about, as usual, my dancing and my confidence in it.

It makes me happy that I performed well tonight, despite and amid my mistakes.

And it makes me happy that my friend B kicked ass in “Chair Bones” tonight. Watching from the wings, all of us were out there with her. She had some devastating balances and turns. She smiled with real achievement. My heart swelled, and it makes me happy that my pride in her, my total joy at her performance, surpasses my desire to do as well. This is her moment. This sharing makes me happy, fills me up to do it all twice more tomorrow plus a photo shoot.

Red Envelope

2007-01-12T00:34:00.000-06:00

Last night I saw a film that inspired me.

(First off, let me reveal, confess, proclaim, that I love my Netflix membership. For $9.99 a month, I get one film at a time with no limit per month. I’d been avoiding falling into this craze, sure in the knowledge that I would become addicted. Indeed, I have. I love the emails announcing that another DVD is on the way. I love receiving what feels like a present in the mail at the end of a long and hard day. I love the ingenious red envelopes marked with No Postage Necessary. But mostly I love adding to my queue. Finally, after years of not quite “getting it” regarding the internet and it’s appeal, I’m hooked. I type in “Cary Grant”, and up pop all his films. I click to read the synopsis of one and deeper I go, onto another page and a Netflix-best-guess of films I’d like because I inquired about X. Deeper and deeper I navigate, hitting the ADD button discriminately and with relish. I review my queue, my last move before clicking out for the night. I go to bed with a rush like I’ve been shopping.)

Last night’s film was “I’ll Be Seeing You” with Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotton. There was also a star turn by a teenage Shirley Temple, and here’s why I’m inspired: before me were two incredible dancers, Ginger and Shirley, performing at top form in a straight drama, not dancing. I love the idea that they did not need to use every ounce of what they were capable of as performers. They ably and convincingly played their respective parts with fullness. Nothing was missing or lacking. They were complete, even though not dancing, and maybe even because of it.

This is a tough concept for those of us who know little else. When a person falls into their life’s work at about the age of seven, it’s pretty unavoidable not to tie up a part of one’s identity in that thing. It’s a challenge to untangle the person from the talent, and yet it’s important. Inasmuch as I strive to integrate all the ways that I am with the things that I love and am good at, into one, sinuous thing, it is also vital that I understand my inherent worth without an ounce of ability in anything. I think the important thing, the Prime Directive, is that I am compelled.

And so I was impressed by Ginger and Shirly; I am pleasantly inspired. It’s important, especially at a moment like this when I’m on a plane to California to perform a solo I’m not quite ready for. Nevertheless, it’s happening, and tomorrow night. Seeing last night’s film aided my process of exiting my funk of yesterday, the height of my dancing insecurity re: this solo. Witnessing their superb acting jogged my memory about my own worth and capabilities independent of my almost-daily practice of dance.

No Dancing Necessary, it’s simply inherent, printed on my front, marking me deliverable for tomorrow night. I click ADD on this dance in an already long queue of ones performed a tad prematurely. These dances inevitably and always come together, teaching me something while tapping into a superhero part of myself.

Dance is what I do. It is largely responsible for who I’ve become. But I can and do exist without it; I am just compelled not to.

The Function of the Devil

2007-01-07T13:38:00.000-06:00

This last week found JSB back to work after a two-week break for the holidays. We returned with a vengeance, reassembling two major ballets and finishing another one, also major.

We were visited for three days by Arturo Fernandez, the choreographer of the virtuosic female solo “Chair Bones”. All of us ladies are working on it; I even get to perform it as soon as next week, on tour in California.

Wow, what a solo. During my run-through in front of Arturo and the company yesterday, I’ve never felt more exhausted during a piece. And yet I got through it. I learned a little about where I can allow breath in, where I can afford to push more, and where I had the absolute time of my life.

This solo is a big deal for me. Mostly because of the limits I put on myself as a ballet dancer specifically. I always make it known that I consider myself to be just outside the line of fire re: classical dance. Yes, I do ballet. Yes, I dance en pointe. But these don’t mean that I am classical. I am neo-classical maybe, contemporary definitely. And so a solo like this is rare for me. It’s not what I usually expect from myself. But I’m so glad it’s here. I switched pointe shoe brands last year, and a whole new psycological world of possibility has opened up for me. I therefore get to do this dance: me and a chair and my own bones.

Unfortunately this week brought on an Achilles aggravation. I knew this to a “devilish function”, a fly in the ointment of my new-found, still fragile belief in my ability to execute a task this monumental. I was forced to tell Arturo that I could not rehearse on one of his few precious days with us. My pride and work ethic were shaken. James treated me to the depth of his wisdom, and I quickly found the strength to sit down and watch. Ouch. But that allowed me to absorb in another way, through my eyes and my faith.

And so I was back at it yesterday, pushing through the pain with the help of anti-inflammatories, tape and adrenaline. I attempt to exorcise the demon in the devilish function and absorb the lessons: that I am capable, that I am deserving, and that, no matter what, my inherent value is not dependent on any of these.

Parade of Names - A Diary of New Orleans

2006-12-23T16:30:00.000-06:00

I am in New Orleans. A little vacation. A treat to myself before I launch into 2007. I feel my soul settle into this slowed rythym even as I simultaneously reach for my rental car keys in haste. I gotta hurry up and slow down! I bump up against all my urgent ways. For these few days I attempt to slow my pace. My sincere effort reaps rewards. Rewards upon rewards, as practically every encounter I have involves the exchange of first names and eye contact. It is for this reason, and another one described on Day 4, that this entry will, unusually for me, use first names. I could go on and on about each of these folks. In the interest of itching to get this out, this is but a taste.

L.J. - L.J. is my friend who lives here. In his adopted city of thirteeen years (the exact number I’ve been in Minneapolis), he is an intrepid photographer. Witnessing him in action is like watching a pool shark. I see the wheels of his brain turn, plotting his next shot. There is invasion of personal space, physical and emotional. It is a little dangerous, and always magnificent.

Observing him interface with his art and this culture, I am inspired. Though not dancing this trip, my path is nevertheless and once again confirmed through this convergence. Though vastly different, our respective mediums are sympatico. We both say thousands of words with our pictures. For him it seems to be about breaking and redefining boundaries. For me it is about freshness, invention, and creating a history of images.

Day 1

I arrive on Sunday and join a second line parade. Two tubas. Apparently two tubas in a parade brass band is exceptional. After we dance/march along Canal to Chartres, I wind up at a Chanukah party, coincidentally on the same block. This recently renovated second story apartment in the French Quarter is complete with requisite balconies front and back, leopard carpeting, and original wood floors.

The night progresses. I am in another residence, this time in the Treme neighborhood. This is L.J.’s haunted house, built sometime in the 1800’s. These wood floors inspire immediate shoe removal. I think about extending my stay and makin’ up a dance.

Heather - Winding down with a 4 AM dirty martini (with the olives serving as dinner), another social interaction occurs, this time of the heartbreaking variety. Sitting in the open bar window, passersby stop to chat in typical New Orleans fashion. Heather is a stripper, just getting off work. Younger than me, at 33 she looks like she could be my mother. Accompanying her is a 17-year-old boy, her lover. Smoking Marlboro Reds and leading a black dog on a leash, we hear about her pregnancy and the $40 private dance she just performed for her boss. L.J.’s inquisitiveness draws her out and out. As the odd couple prepares to leave, Heather leans against the window frame that separates us. Embracing me to say goodbye, she won’t let go until I kiss her cheek. Perhaps she senses my morbid fascination, my compulsion toward hearing her story. Can she read compasson in my eyes, or fear?

Day 2

Running errands with L.J., I see the city from the inside out. What should take ten minutes takes about an hour and a half. Life is humid here, slower in the thicker air, and as I continue to soak in what this means, enjoying the effect on my skin, I resolve to change the rapidity of my ways. Slower is good, good like organic produce is good. Good like journaling at the end of the day, like grinding my own oily coffee beans and waiting for them to steep in the French press.

Willie – Later I am welcomed to a dinner party that has me sitting next to Willie, a 64-year-old-Guggenheim-Fellow visual artist. Papier-mache and paint. Since 2000, black and white. Triptychs and transitions, his work stuns me and my full belly, satisfied by his partner Joy’s fine cooking. The walls are hung with shades of grey, his latest unfinished works expressing Katrina’s devastation. Texture emanates; I feel it even with my back turned. Willie and I talk. We begin casually enough, but then out comes his exibition book from his current traveling show. I turn the pages on my lap, and Willie tells me about each piece, our mutual excitement growing as we near the end and his latest works. He’s the real deal and good people on top of it. I buy the book but don’t ask for an autograph; I already received his mark.

In this charmed circle, I am embraced by these Seventh Ward citizens, collecting here to meet about their community venture, The Porch. Willie’s brainchild, this burgeoning organization is launching under the careful watch of the most real representation of “diversity” I’ve ever encountered. (Words like “community” and “diversity” are thrown around with the best of intentions in Minneapolis, but here I see it in action.) Sitting in this circle in the middle of Willie’s studio, there is a glow of pure humanity, devoid of color barriers, like the grey on the walls, that burns in its all-embracing understanding. I feel my self-imposed social shackles begin to unbuckle. This town welcomes, and in addition to meeting new folks, I meet with a new self too. In my short time here, here I am, in this right place at this right time, privy. Laughter, even joy, pierces the southern winter night, and I relax.

Resting before re-entering the night, I hit upon a solid idea (or at least a launching point), for a new dance. Thanks Willie.

Day 3

Bill - On the way to breakfast we stumble upon the St. Charles streetcar unveiling. Again, the right place at the right time. There is a high school marching band, indifferently clad in purple uniforms. There is the podium, men in suits lined up to speak, taking turns saying the same words in different configurations. “This is a great day for the city of New Orleans. This is a symbol to the world, showing that we’re on the way to recovery.” The words are true, just a little numbed with the banal repeating. I see the mayor. I see Senator William Jefferson, a.k.a. Dollar Bill Jefferson. I sit in a streetcar; I put a window down. My trip becomes history.

Joy - The afternoon finds me wandering around the FQ. I run into Joy of the night before, charming on her bicycle. She tells me about the great designer discount shop that only a former New Yorker would know about. My immersion is confirmed.

I pass Napoleon House and stop for a quick Pimm’s Cup. I seat myself like the sign directs, pull out my laptop, arrange my bags around my feet, and wait. No service, like I’m invisible. I take it as a sign to not start drinking so early, and leave. Upon relaying the story later, L.J. reminds me that I’m in New Orleans. Oh yeah, it’s slower. Guess it takes more than three days to change my DNA. I decide to extend my stay.

After a dinner of seafood gumbo and jambalaya (that’s even better cold later), we head to the Maple Leaf to hear the Rebirth Brass Band. I’m floored. We edge our way to the front row of the sardine-packed and gyrating crowd. I am hit by the full force of brass instruments playing loudly. I’m so close I can see the spit of the trumpet player hang off the end of his instrument. Puffing his cheeks like nothing I’ve ever seen, he is all raw and sweaty muscularity. He flirts with me during the break. I feel vital.

Ruth - Out back I meet her. Encased in a red nylon jacket with the hood tied fast around her head, she resembles Gollum and is about as old. She asks me the meaning behind my smile after L.J. cracks a joke about my divorce. She must’ve seen right through to the other side of me. She launches into a rhythmic, repetitive, spoken-wordesque narrative distinguishing between fucking, sex and making love. Her heart is all sewn up, “in the dusty library” as she puts it. Only the first two for her. In my head I arrive at a different conclusion: the last two for me, thanks, ‘cause according to Ruth, fucking is for money. I remember Heather.

At the end of the band’s last set, I’m pulled onstage, one amongst a gaggle of Tulane females. I am objectified, but it’s cool. The trumpet player makes his way over and blasts in my ears. I dance.

Day 4

Sean – I oversleep and miss the 10:30 Lafayette Cemetery tour. I decide to go anyway, to wander on my own. I love old cemeteries, especially on a rainy day like this. Upon entering I steal a pink flower from a low bush, roots entangled with those of an ancient oak. Sean walks toward me down the central path. He waves and says “hi” as if we’ve known one another forever. He hands me garlic in jest; we are fast friends. The caretaker of the place for ten years, he takes me around, the best tour I could ask for. So glad I overslept. Wandering circuitously in the rain, I learn about the bones. I learn about the names, that they are still being collected, all those who passed with Katrina and worse, the levees breaking. I introduce myself as Penelope, and he says, “So I can call you Penny?” That familiarity sums it up. Names. I am honored to introduce mine here for this ephemeral time.

I succeed in acquiring a Pimm’s Cup. I write. I drink. I wear my flower. My extra day is hitting the spot. Back at L.J.’s, I pace around, ear glued to a phone as I cancel and rearrange to accommodate my choice to linger. I am self-satisfied. Choosing to stay is my first New Orleanian act: that of throwing caution to the wind.

Tonight’s gallery opening is postponed, so it’s dinner and on to a Burlesque show. The tasteful little Santa dances with pasties are cute, albiet choreographically uninteresting. Some great seed ideas though. My already ticking brain jumpstarts, linking images: Heather and my morbid fascination, Ruth’s wizened and dried up perspective on sex and love, these Burlesque dancers whose sophistication is apparent and earned, my own “objectification” of the night before. What makes a moment or a movement palatable, and when does a thing become grotesque and unacceptable? Who decides? Where is my own very personal and thin line drawn?

Something is percolating in me. Like my French press coffee and my Pimm’s Cup, I think it’ll be worth the wait. And I’m down with that; I’m bringin’ back a 50 lb. suitcase full of patience.

Katrina – This whole last day is rainsoaked. A fittingly romantic setting for my first visit to Café du Monde at midnight. At 2:30 AM I’m off, driving back to Houston, the origin of my trip. It is not lost on me, the extreme wetness and scary, skidding moments as I exit the city on Highway 10. I think about the refugees of Katrina lucky enough to get to where I’m going, to Houston and higher ground. I can’t begin to imagine; it just hurts.

In the blackness I navigate the long bridges heading out. This time I cannot see the stunning, dinosaur beauty of the partially immersed trees just outside Baton Rouge. But I know they are there, holding vigil till daylight breaks. I imagine there is fog on the surface of the water, keeping secrets, remembering.

Penny – I become a new city as my personal flood continues to soak in and errode my soil. Maybe my dances are more like L.J.’s pictures than I thought. Inventing fresh boundaries, that’s me.

P.S.
L.J. – Thanks go out to you for showing me that life in New Orleans is the parade; it’s not just passing by.

Parallel

2006-11-26T11:57:00.000-06:00

Last night N and I performed my new duet, “Parallel”, in the Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening. It is tradition that this annual showcase is held on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving. In my case, thinking of last night, this is most appropriate as I am indeed thankful.

There were two shows back to back. I like the rythym of that. When I feel good, like I’m proportioned and that life is balanced (or tilted in a good direction), I don’t need superlatives. I don’t need to be the best or prettiest or thinnest. I can share my toys and meld my light with the collective. That’s how I felt last night, especially for the second show.

I’d been feeling slightly insecure about the piece. I had no sense of perspective. I thought it too sentimental, cloying. I brought in C to watch, help, input, and that gave me the objectivity I needed. I then felt free to express, to let my emotions go beyond the boundaries of my focused and tiny world.

Because the botton line is, this piece is personal. For the first time, consciously, my art is reflecting my life. I did not set out to do it. Indeed, I wanted to explore the archetypes in Peter Pan. I wanted to have a wand and be a sort of Tinkerbell. What came out instead was a jogging, running, determined, together-yet-separate duet. Mostly close but with respective gazes off into the distance. Yes, this dance is about me and J.

At the top of our wedding programs we had a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It said something about love being not about gazing at each other, but about looking outward together in the same direction. This is a beautiful thought. And yet, in my experience, I can assuredly say that it is of vital importance to look a person in the eyes, right through to the heart. And to stay there, and protect that with your life.

I do believe in love. I clap my hands like the lost boys. I’m at present busy redefining it. I’m redefining happiness as I throw my priorities up in the air to see which lands where and in what order. I’d like to think that I can have it all, the big three: relationship, career, family. I clap my hands three times.

Throughout my piece I yell directives. Just one word, and the same one: “Go!”. During last night’s second show, I played with how I said it the third time, near the end. I was softer. There was a vulnerable yet quiet strength to how it came out. The last “Go” commands the curtain to fly open and for N and I to stop. We let go of hands, balanced on one leg each. Close together yet facing the same direction. Blackout.

On the next “lights up”, I want to feel equipped to put my other foot down, take a step toward another person, and look, really look. Here’s the thing though. I also need to feel free to turn sideways and stand on one leg if I want/need. Clap my hands, I want it all.

Chair Bones

2006-11-23T00:52:00.000-06:00

I am learning a dance that makes me want to be a better dancer. I want to rise to the occasion if it.

Four of us are learning it: a solo, en pointe, and a sort of tour-de-force. The plan, as it stands, is that each of us will get a chance to perform it. Oh, I hope so. I surprise myself that I love it so. I am scared of it, but in the best possible way. Because it’s so enormous, there are many chances for redemption. I just need to know the steps, really know them. I know that I can get myself to that point, to the place where the brain exits the building so that the body and heart can take over.

It’s just that it’s so fast. Steps are coming at me before I’ve remembered what I forgot a second ago. And yet that’s part of the process, this one anyway.

Today we learned the end. The soft quality required then, after about ten minutes of really going at it, will be a sweet time. My feet will be numb I’m sure. Worth it.

It’s called “Chair Bones”, and I love it as I get to know it. New love. Good.

like e.e.cummings

2006-11-21T00:13:00.000-06:00

Like

a

journal,
my

dance re
cords my

days.

These Two Hands are Enough

2006-11-19T12:36:00.000-06:00

Turned 36, and continue to turn, to ripen. Life is rich and full. Too full sometimes as I tend to over-book. But as with all that is worthy, one must examine the perimeters, the extremes.

I am on the fence about the whole next part of this life. Where to go from here, in dance, in love? What is priority? What remains that needs shedding? What do I need to reclaim?

I get caught up in this quest(ion)ing, and then life throws me a simple surprise, like the serenade the other night by two hands and a guitar.

I wrestle with my free will, with my ability to absolutely do whatever I want. It is terrifying, like jumping off a cliff. I want, on the one hand, to shackle myself to any available surface, to cling tight, to shut my eyes against the oncoming ocean waves of salt. The other hand wants to be brave. A tiny, flickering part of me wants/needs to utterly let go, to fall, to fly, to reunite with the fearless (dancer) that is in here somewhere, to fail.

Two hands and a guitar. Perhaps that’s the closest metaphor to what I’m feeling. The right hand plucks and strums, is slightly longer-nailed out of necessity. The left is most beautiful in its seeking, knowing precision, hitting (almost) all the right notes, pressing strings against the neck. A gift. Two hands, expressively different, unique, yet aiming for the same lofty goal of sharing.

I try to let go even as I hang on, to strum and pluck even as I strike a chord and let it melt away with my eyes closed. It seems to be the way of it, this duality, these extremes existing simultaneously. I balance cling with release, safety with a razor-edge of danger and risk, my right hand with my left, the coordination of bravery. Some days it comes down to regaining comfort in my own skin. Others it’s about sitting in a doctor’s office and not melting down.

I renew my goal to be open to the potential of every moment. Openheartedness has served me well these past months, tempered with new boundaries (though these shape-shift daily). Life is certainly interesting. Maybe that’s the main thing: I am holding my own interest. And for now, until the next necessary regurgitation of words, I am enough.

Ties that Bind

2006-10-29T23:42:00.000-06:00

Is it the finalty of divorce that hits like such a shockwave, or more like the feeling that it’s the end of an era? I’m thinking probably both.

My tether to J has been cut. I can no longer lay claim to him in any way. All dealings now are voluntary, not obligatory. Given the nature of our relationship, I know this distinction will not matter; our fondness for one another will inform any future interactions. But there’s something about that piece of paper, about the phrase “Dissolution without Child”, that matters.

Marriage matters. It is a circumstance set apart. It is a tie that binds, and if severed, burns like hell.

This mattering is what breaks my heart about the GLBT community not having the right to do it. (As if we “straight” folks set such great examples.) We get to do it, and I do not take that for granted. We have the right to go for it, to fuck it up, to succeed, while others do not. No good.

It’s because of this mattering that I and my heart are not taking this lightly. It’s a big deal, and I’m sad. Even as I’m all about my new changing, pieces of me break all over again at this dissolution. It is a death.

My Buddhist practice tells me that life and death are simultaneous. I do believe this, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t mourn. Indeed, I do. Yet my mourning will beget new life, I know.

It has already weirdly opened up my dancing. I have a general sense of increased fearlessness about the whole enterprise. If I can withstand this coming through to the other side of the severing of a marital tie, I can certainly put my ever-changing body into a leotard every day. I’ve let go of some primal baggage and thus am lighter.

That being said, my soul feels the fresh burden of a new heaviness. Perhaps it’s only temporary as I figure out where to stow it. Or maybe it will remain, integrated in a transparent way. However this comes out, in the meantime I am in an environment where any outcome will be accepted. I am blessed to be dancing among humans, not bun-heady robots where I’d have to stuff my circularity into squares.

While at the end J expressed an absense of marital love, there nevertheless was a loving partnership. Now that I think about it, that concept carries a lot of weight. At the end of the day your partner is the person you can count on unconditionally. At the end of this day I uphold that concept, it’s just from afar now. And I know it’s reciprocated. I do.

In the absence of marital rights the GLBT community forges partnerships, and through this writing perhaps I’ve changed my own mind. Perhaps a partnership is the strongest thing. From where I stand, it’s what I have left: a binding tie that defies paper.

At This Dark Hour

2006-10-26T22:02:00.000-05:00

News
Hits sometimes
Like lightening
At others
Like an oncoming storm

The rolling of thunder
The darkening sky
Piercing raindrops
Right into
My mouth

I absorb
I inherit
The wind
It blows
The leaves off
Nearby trees
The ones surrounding my view
Protecting and
Enfolding

Me

It is dark now
Night and the storm
Of my life
At this moment

And yet

There are
Piercings
Of joy

The leaves continue to fall
And fall

At this dark hour
All is somehow still
Possible

I well up
Go blind
Endure
I am not sure
About
Anything

I sit quietly
Smoke rises
I remember to be sad
It is contained in my body
That occassionally defies
Gravity

I murmer
Whispered wishes
Well wishing
All things for the best

I continue
I dance
I swallow hard

What next?

Beyond
The leafless trees
New buildings are exposed
Showing me
That life goes on
And in a heavy way

I sway

Burn

2006-10-22T11:53:00.000-05:00

I look inside for humility. That’s reality.
Mere language, phraseology, isn’t reality.
I want burning, burning!
Be friends, all of you, with your burning.
Burn your thinking in humility.
Burn your phrases.

Rumi

Reading the above on a plane, I take this to heart even as I wonder at its meaning.

Heat.
My burning is directed toward the moon, toward its cycles in relation to those of my

Body.

I burn,
Standing in the flame like sister Joan.

Aiming
To now stop in place. To then remount and begin another pass up the spiral.

These burning times
Are heady as they
Come knocking.

My blank watchface
Tells me little but that I am here and it is

Some time.

To Be Downstage Left

2006-10-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

I dance because of its immediacy. I was reminded of this last weekend as JSB performed our fall season at the Guthrie’s McGuire Theater. I danced and remembered.

James opened the program with a solo performed while reciting Hamlet’s famous soliliquy. This was an inspired addition to our show. Created in NYC in 1992, this revival affords him the right to claim that he is the first to perform “Hamlet” at the new Guthrie. His movements aligned with then juxtaposed the language, rich in its simple delivery. We all listened from backstage, continuing our warm-up. On Sunday however, I wanted to give it my full attention. I watched from the edge of the first wing, downstage left. I was blown away by that simple delivery thing, and newly inspired for my own solo/(silent)soliliquy in “Klezmer Dances”.

At the beginning we each emerge from the center. I am first, and so get to do a small, grounded solo before I link with N. I leave him falling into J, then begin my circling. I walk, at first toe-heel, then heel-toe for two rounds before evolving into lunging, chugging, and finally, running. We are all running. We come together in a joyous, hand-clasped circle. We weave, with and without holding on. We end the section in pairs. The waltz begins.

For me, it is this initial circling that sets the tone. In the pure red shell of our new theater, in our russet and rust costumes, we are open-hearted and invited.

I watched from that same wing every performance of Sally’s new “Brahms Duet”. My proximity to the action, to the expressive faces and bodies of Sally and M as they gripped and grabbed, fell into and, ultimalely, away from, one another, was a private taking-in. I was privy to many rehearsals, and with each viewing my heart has absorbed more fully the beautiful ironies of life, mine included.

This week brings a needed planned lay-off. I am in Houston setting James’ “Amahl and the Night Visitors”. I am bonding with new dancers, folks I will perform with in December when I return to dance the role of Amahl with this group, Sandra Organ Dance Company. I reconnect to myself, reaccessing the immediacy of my quirks and natural rythyms. It is a relief to be away from my hectic schedule (though I miss my cat and balcony, and, I’m ashamed to say, my car).

This empty time, like spacious Texas, is filled up with my changing. I plot the day tomorrow, beginning with a Graham class and ending in the old home of a new friend.

I see possibility, sense it even in my end-of-the-day aching back that so often feels so much better. To be or not to be? To be, to be, to be…

In My Attempt

2006-10-09T23:44:00.000-05:00

Today
My heart remained intact
I performed in the studio
With integrity
Sincere
In my intention

Tonight
The moon began shrouded
Then later cleared
Revealing itself
Incomplete
In its clarity

The skyline
Of this city that I call home
Was clear
Clean-lined
Stoic
And graceful

As we near performance time
My heart reaches out
And upward
Striving
To be read
Remaining quiet
Attempting
To beat my song

I long
To share
To spread
To be read

Attempting
In my attempt
I follow
And am led

Poem

2006-10-01T08:07:00.000-05:00

I sit
The bare necessities
Are here
My hands
Empty
My feet
Adhering to the surfaces:
Kitchen tile, wood, carpet
Cold
My heart yearns
And stands to be alone

I breathe
Exhaling
Intaking
No faking
But protecting

I do a dance in a circle
And remember
And forget
It is for all of us
On this other side of love

No longer clinging
To what has been
But to what is becoming
And becoming

I find myself
Even as I want to get lost
And again risk
Pain and my heart
That is fragile and ever-strong

I sing in the car
Notorious bad voice actually able
Alone in my protection

What
Is there left to learn

How to burn

Bridging the Gap

2006-09-23T09:37:00.000-05:00

James Sewell Ballet has had two performances of our new piece “Turf” so far, and it’s interesting to witness the incoming responses. The subject matter (violence, torture, death and redemption) is bringing up people’s stuff, like it or not. Our job as dancers is to do due diligence in representing these atrocities as thoroughly as possible. However, is it possible to remain neutral, to just represent?

In talking with C yesterday it was interesting to note our experiential differences. I’m still thinking about that conversation and what it continues to bring up for me. The jist of it was that he is very much literally engaged in the piece. “Method” as he put it. He works himself into a lather and literally gets infuriated with me as his victim. I, however, blindfolded and bound, feel quite safe. I feel like I am interacting with C, not with a torturer. I bridge that gap myself. Otherwise it would be too terrifying, too uncertain from a dancing perspective. And here’s another thing: how “dancerly” need we be? This is the inherent struggle we are all having with this piece. Physically it’s hugely satisfying as we get to jump and soar and pair quickly and come apart. It gets quite spectacular in that sense. And then suddenly the virtuosity turns ugly and we are primitive-brained, competitive, and capable of killing. How do we make this transition while remaining within the form of dance? Need we remain within the form?

As we embark on the last of this series of performances tonight, I will contemplate these questions and look forward to re-opening them again in January when we tour and perform at O’Shaughnessy Auditorium in St. Paul. I think we can strike a balance. I think in many ways we have. My vote tends to lean toward the realistic rather than the performative. Yet here we are dancing to this highly dramatic Bartok score, and it must be acknowledged and represented in a real way.

I love this, this puzzling over a thing that’s so worthwhile. It’s interesting to note how, even with these unanswered questions, the piece is happening. It is vital. It is awesome to dance and experience in front of an audience. I guess that’s what it comes down to. Discovery onstage holds an important place for me. Not that I deliberately hold back in rehearsal (in fact I love the risk-taking that is inherent to the rehearsal process), but there is inevitably something more to be excavated onstage, and when I least expect it. I think this happens as a result of being in the moment and open-hearted.

As always I am struck by how many metaphors for life can be found in the dance world. At this juncture in my own life where I’m attempting to open my pedestrian self to be as open as the dancer in me, I discover that my suffering is down and dirty and that my joy is deeper.

At the end of “Turf” J and I meet on the bridge, hostages being traded back to our sides. We stop in the middle and remove our blindfolds. I look up into his angelic face and am flooded with compassion, recognizing a kindred suffering. We step out of time and do a duet of mutual support, physical longing and comfort.

That’s just the kind of interaction I’m reinacting in my pedestrian life. I listen to C’s romantic history and I send out threads of admiration and understanding. I comfort R with her impending divorce and can relate on a level I never thought possible. And I have a moment with B in the Rapid Park lot, where we fall deeper into the love of friendship for having shared our dreams with one another one day on my balcony at the height of summer.

Following the threads, I sip from my glass that’s perfectly full because it keeps replenishing. The stuff of my life gets dirtier and is loved harder like the Velveteen Rabbit. A door closes and another one opens. Sometimes you even get one leading onto a balcony with a view.

Stop Time Blind

2006-09-16T09:12:00.000-05:00

Beginning the last day of my dancing week, and I feel like recording what’s going on.

James is basically done choreographing “Turf”, our new ballet premiering Wednesday with the Minnesota Orchestra. It’s about turf wars and torture, death and redemption, or not. It’s a comment on how things operate now, and what we might still be able to learn.

I play a torture victim, and for much of the piece I’m blindfolded, my hands bound behind me. Even so, I actually still achieve some dancing. The hard-core torture sequences are highly scored, so in theory there will be no surprises. But I truly cannot see, and anything can happen. It’s been a trip, living in my little world of sightlessness. My instincts kick in; sometimes I find myself responding differently to the external stimulous, even though I know what’s coming. There is much trust between me and the other performers. This has to look real, I must experience it in a real way to some degree, and so we all must find a way to “go there”. I still haven’t found the full through-line for myself. I get closer with every rehearsal, with every timing clarification, defining my boundaries so that I can then expand them. I look forward to pulling this off.

Simultaneously to this I’ve been doing my usual intrepid work with Deborah Jinza Thayer, a frazzled genius for whom it’s always a pleasure to work. Plus, submitted a grant and found out my new duet got accepted into the Walker Art Center’s Choreographers Evening! It was a big week.

This AM as I sit in my overstuffed, garage sale chair with my cat on one arm and my coffee on the other, I contemplate a new day of my body expanding through space in its attempt to stop time.

Exquisite Pain

2006-09-06T00:12:00.000-05:00

Today we had folks come in to watch some sections of “Klezmer Dances”. This went rather well considering this ballet is new to all but three of us. These situations are always good in that they seem to bump us up a notch. We have to find a way out of snags or mishaps during the course of a run-through, and this begets a deeper inquiry into a piece.

This audience in particular helped immensely in gently guiding us toward an understanding of traditional Jewish dances. James is very clear that he is not attempting to manfacture a culture other than his own. He is instead inspired by this music and by the idea, inherent in Judiasm, that dance is the highest form of worship.

And so we are off on an investigation of exquisite pain, agony and ecstasy, shame and pride, that reflect the tradition of Jewish culture. These are our new launching pads for the piece. It’s now becoming an inside-out process, no longer anymore just about the steps and pointed toes. (Steps and pointed toes are inherent to us, so they will be there, just no longer as the main focus. Rather, no longer mine.) I feel free to conduct experiments, to flub a step in the name of exploration and deepening.

Tomorrow we will begin to reconstruct my solo. I am eager and slightly nervous, in the best sense. I’ve been thinking of having a closed door policy, just me and James. But tonight I’m pretty sure I’ve decided to let it be open. My process is everyone’s and theirs is mine. This is, blessedly, that kind of company. If I truly work from the inside out anyway it shouldn’t matter. These folks are my people.

During a conversation with James last week we were discussing the solo and how he, this time around, wants to get me to a place that is estatic in my experience. I was saying how hard that will be for me. I have a much easier time being dramatic and angsty. He knows that about me, and when I assumed everyone felt that way, he said that he doesn’t. He is not afraid to express his ecstatic joy. And so that’s my starting point. I will attempt to bridge the gap between my fears and their revealing. This task feels so apt at this juncture in my life. What a perfect opportunity to finally shed. I have a real tragedy to call upon, and now that I’m mostly through to the other side, I see joy. I experience it daily now, again. So on to the task of expressing it, letting it out, giving it voice through my performing, but first, through this newly informed process.

Dusk

2006-09-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

It is dusk. The church immediately across from my balcony just rang its bells. I am going to a play tonight at the new Guthrie Theater, the proscenium space where JSB will perform in October. I can’t wait to see it, apparently blood red, like the inside of a heart or a womb.

I took yoga this AM. I have three days off and felt the need to get “in body” and to cleanse. I do indeed feel detoxified and refreshed, though tired, pleasantly tired. This is the gentle lull before my night begins, a transition that I love. It always begets a thinking in me, a thoughtfulness about my own dusk as I contemplate turning 36.

I am mostly excited at the notion. My body, though dealing with ever-present issues and old injuries, feels, in many ways, healthier than ever. I witness C, on the cusp of 40, as he negotiates time and his own body as a fine dancer. Today I felt a pride, a degree of wanting to take good care of myself, that feels deep and sincere in its necessity.

Later…

Just returned from seeing Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing”. It was about love. I am reminded that it all comes down to that. One of the lines went something like, “It’s easy to love a person when they’re at their best. What’s hard is to love them when they’re at their worst.” True. It comes down to having faith that the person you’re with is deeper than what they’re demonstrating at a worst moment.

This reminds me of my body too. How fine I am when it’s feeling fine, but oh how morose and out of balance I become when it’s operating at a low speed and agility. Here too it’s about loving it anyway, giving it the benefit of the doubt that it will bounce back, rise again, serve my needs toward fulfilling myself. I’ve got to have an unconditional relationship with it and not be a fair weather friend.

I take responsibility for not always being at my best in relationships. I acknowledge my tendency to be self-absorbed when it comes to my dancing. To some degree, I may always be this way. And yet here’s what I’ve learned: I am deeeper than my dancing self-absorption. This divorce is teaching me that. It’s forcing me to sink or swim and I choose, everyday, to swim. To keep my head above the water of insecurity and smallness. And in this act of daily choosing, my capacity for love grows. I feel it like a pulling. I give it first of all to myself with the hope that the outcome will be that I won’t feel so completely driven to prove my worth through my dancing. Yet I am, even as I say this, first and foremost a dancer. It is what I’ve always been, what I’ve always wanted to be, from when I was about 7. It’s just that now, I’m realizing that also what I want to be is full, big, enormous as a person, as a human, connecting to others, either through my dancing or my newly easy smile. I am becoming more integrated and therefore freer to express, in any medium.

Tonight’s play was about love. I am about love, whether or not I have a lover to bestow it upon. It’s still there, not in the least dried up. In fact it overflows. It pours forth; my eyes are clear, my ears are hearing, and tonight, the rain reminds me of all of this.

Carrots

2006-08-31T23:05:00.000-05:00

It continues to astound me that a dancer can continue to improve.

I remember when that first occcurred to me. Sometime in high school I realized that turning professional did not represent a dead stop, but in fact a new beginning, a new road of improving. While it’s true that in the ballet world there’s a relatively limited time to accomplish the “big stuff”: major pas de deuxs, in big ballets, with all the tricks of the trade. But on a daily level, grappling with technique, line, form, there is always room to grow. A dancer must somehow find a way to love rehearsal. That’s where the improving happens, in leaps and bounds. Repetition of steps, ad infinitum it sometimes feels like, begets an integrity, a resoursefulness, that’s brought to the stage and, I swear, a spectator can tell.

Last week I watched James demonstrate a phrase. We learned it the day before and continued working on it, over and over, in the context of his new ballet. I was struck by his ease and beauty. At 45, he is, in many ways, at the top of his game. Just last season he performed a solo created almost fifteen years ago. He said that last year he danced it better than ever. It’s because he learned where to relax, where to conserve. Plus his body knew the niches of the dance that much more, fifteen years of knowlegde and practice more.

I feel this too in many ways. I feel my core more, even as I feel increasing back pain. My body is smart. It knows how to do things better and with ease. I can actually stand in first position without desperately gripping the barre, even after lunch.

As week two of the new season winds down, I write as I prepare my dinner after a day of nothing but carrots: a real one and some juice. Adrenaline courses through my veins and, behold, I look forward to rehearsal tomorrow!

Fall

2006-08-19T20:22:00.000-05:00

Summer is coming to a close, and I can feel it in the air. Its quality is different and the light too. The shadows are longer, and the shafts of end-of-the-day sunlight are more golden and autumnal. This is my favorite time of year, perhaps for its simultaneous blend of things winding down combined with the promise of new beginnings.

This moment is the newest beginning I’ve ever had, and I’ve had many. They all run together, however, in the face of this one, this new road without J and our marriage. This weather, actual and emotional, hammers that point home more than anything. More even than my move to my new apartment. Maybe because the weather is so certain and so beyond my control.

I start back with James Sewell Ballet on Monday. Even though this is year thirteen for me, the feeling is the same: first-day-of-school butterflies and total fear. Once I step into the studio, it will all become clear. I will reconnect with James, resume my close and specific relationships with the others, and see myself in the mirror again. How will I look?

As I’m currently PMSing, slightly rounder. As I botched my haircolor, slightly darker. As my hair’s kind of growing out (what in the hell am I doing with my hair?), slightly shaggier. And as I’ve just climbed a mountain personally, slightly stronger, with a broader visibility on a clear day.

I am happy and sad. These are truly simultaneous. How can one relatively little body contain so much? Sometimes it’s overwhelming. It’ll be a relief to get some of this pent-up emotion out in the studio, through my pores and my limbs and my expression. The wordless nature of my work makes for resoursefulness when needing to get a thing out.

Wordless and wordy. I’ve become very wordy this summer with these blogs and my almost constant communication with friends and family, my support. Plus, my Buddhist chanting, though in Sanskrit, is words. Behind them, pushing them out, are my intentions, my fears, my nature. I try to decifer the mysteries of my heart. I try to look at these squarely and with bravery.

Dancing. When not doing it I wonder how it’s possible, the contortions and the discipline. When doing it I wonder…I wonder.

And that’s the pull…the wondrous gravitational force behind my falling toward the earth. I am of it: dirty gorgeous and bloated with water, full of autumn sun and unpredictable storms to weather.

New Process

2006-08-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

I started a new piece today! A duet fo myself and N, about running. We start jogging in place, we pause mid stride, we resume, we lunge and pounce.

We partner, engage and detach.
My brain is abuz.
My heart is happy to be creating from scratch.

I like the music, Radiohead.

We’ll continue for a few more weeks then audition for the Walker Art Center’s Choreographer’s Evening. Oh, I want to get in again.

I will work again tomorrow, continuing to map out our course, as a pair and as a piece. What is it becoming? So far we jog, we stop. There seems to be emerging a theme about pouncing on the other’s back. Also an armpit intimacy, heartbreaking in its childishness.

N casts his vote about this moment or that. I listen and apply what I want, unafraid to say, umm…no. Or scarier…yes, yes, that, do that.

Process. Engaged in one. Deepening into my life here on earth. At this end of my day, before my evening begins, I take a moment for myself and plot my uncharted course for the rest.

My Left Calf

2006-08-13T10:05:00.000-05:00

Last night, or early this AM, I was awakened with the onset of a Charlie Horse.

A Charlie Horse is a cramp, I think almost always of the leg, that is like the last, heart-pounding moments of nearing the top of a rollercoaster hill combined with the inevitable fall, downward, to where you think you’re gonna die. That’s exactly how it is with a Charlie Horse.

The worst is that transitional threshold where you know it’s coming, you’re falling. There’s nothing you can do to stop it, and no one can help, not even my cat who kneaded next to me in sympathy. It’s not like a sneeze or an orgasm, where you think it’s going to happen yet for whatever twisted reason of fate, doesn’t. No, this onset is guaranteed.

And so it happened. I put my hands over my face and succumbed. It’s best if I can relax the rest of me, but that’s not always possible. Just having returned from NYC, the concrete walking combined with my Robert Battle workshop (fantastic!) did a number on my body, not to mention the many subway steps with my suitcase over the two days it took to get home.

Charlie Horses have periodically plagued me. Sometimes I’ll go a whole year without one. They usually occur when I’m in the midst of some hard dancing. This one though, while somewhat dance related, was also pure emotion. Some stuff exited the building, and I am glad.

As I was rendered motionless with my hands over my face, pressing, I remembered that yesterday was my, our, wedding anniversary. That was hard to swallow given that things in that department are coming to a close. J and I had lunch and an easy and then hard conversation. I’m so glad and proud that trust is there between us like a safety net. I can always fall into it, no matter what. But it’s still a fall; it is indeed inevitable and inevitably painful. Here too I place my hands over my face and wait it out.

Like my left calf, I know I’ll feel the residual emotional effects today. I’ll have to periodically stretch out in anticipation of class tomorrow, and I will perhaps shed a few tears in some random Fringe show. It’s all good. I am stronger for it all. Bring it on, just not so often that I can’t recover in between.

Circles

2006-08-12T08:56:00.000-05:00

I just returned from NYC, my third trip this summer. Sunday night was J’s wedding, her second, and I am inspired.

She married S, soon to be a Rabbi. This Jewish wedding, therefore, pulled out all the stops: the chuppah, the broken glass, the recitations, and best of all, at least to me, the dancing!

Upon arrival at the reception, we were occupied with cocktails and h’orderves. Eventually we made our way upstairs to our dinner tables, the Klezmer band in full swing. And then they came, J and S, newly married. S carried her in, and they commenced their dance, our dance. This epic must have lasted 20 minutes. One by one we all chained up, holding hands, letting one another in, and surprisingly, not stepping on toes. On and on we circled, with them in the middle. Changing forms was fluid. Chairs found, the newleyweds were lifted exhaultantly aloft. Then they sat in front while we entertained. B and I did Modern Dance to the Klezmer riffs.

I am reminded that their ceremony began with J circling S. Around and around she went, smiling increasingly as if S was relaying a new joke with each pass. I thought about my first piece of choreography, “The Virgin in the Garden”. Towards the end of the second section, “Avoidance”, I run concentric circles around the man. I always thought of that moment, that desperate running, as akin to the scene in the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve: a desperate reversal of planetary revolution, an attempt to go back in time.

Not so here with J circling S. She seeks not to go back in time, but forward, ever forward, toward their new life, their new love that continues to increase, represented by that circle, and their wedding bands: the unending flow of love.

That’s an interesting concept. I suppose on some level an unending flow of love is possible, even when a marriage ends. The connection is still there, just different, maybe more capable of continuing the love for having severed the circle, turning it into a line, setting it free. If the circle starts to strangle sometimes the thing to do is open it wide.

After dinner, toasts and long, long prayers, the dancing recommenced. I hooked up with L and exercised my new groove, ending in a dip. Then B and I, for the last dance of fhe evening, went nuts: improvisational contemporary ballet to an oldies balled. Spinning in our flowered party dresses and high heels, we echoed the dance of earlier, this time a girlie duet, a winding down and a send-off.

I ended this wedding with my own circle. Down a level there was a fountain; I’d been eying it all night. I took my shoes off, hitched up my dress, and circled. Feet soaked and legs sprayed, this was a baptism, a rite, a ritual, a passage. Indeed, I am blessed.

A week before I am slated to begin my thirteenth season with James Sewell Ballet I contemplate the coming repertory. The wedding has turned out to be the perfect research because, among other things, we are reconstructing James’ “Klezmer Dances”. I’ve been wanting to revisit this one for years. The music is infectious, and the various sections come together to form an impression of a community that transcends specific experience. The piece is en pointe, however my solo is blessedly barefoot, my favorite state.

I am in a circle of candles, about 8’ in diameter. I dance to a solo oboe, a metaphor for a Rabbi communing directly with God. I begin and end the same every time, but the bulk of the solo is an improv based on prescribed movements and intentions. I remember the first time around really struggling with this in rehearsal. It was hard for me to muster the appropriate intensity when in the studio. I probably felt inhibited in the bare, light rehearsal room, especially with folks watching. It’ll be interesting, therefore, to see how things go this time. Aside from the obvious excitement of looking forward to performing, I am mostly excited about working with James on this again. We really hit on something during the initial creation period, and my hope is to go deeper, creating a spiral out of the circle, going around again, but on a different, higher level.

As my summer winds down, I think about the little spiral that’s formed these three months. For awhile I was indeed turning, just in the same damn spot. I wore bare the surface under my feet. Now, however, I am beginning to move, to spiral instead of merely circle. I look forward to returning to work, to going deeper, to bringing my recent experience to my craft.

At the end of the solo, after the contained whirlwind of dancing, I blow. The candles, like with a birthday wish, extinguish all at once. But the impression of light is still there, lingering in the mind’s eye, the promise of a circle.

Heart

2006-08-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday was my one-night-only performance of “Carmen” with the MN Orchestra. I was commissioned to choreograph a five-minute chunk as part of this semi-staging. As the Fringe continues, I must admit a part of me wanted to be out seeing shows. Having seen two earlier in the day, I felt my Ultra Pass burning in my pocket. The juxtaposition of venues, Orchestra Hall vs. the Playwright’s Center, was, well, it was noted.

As we stretched and warmed up for our entrance at the top of Act II, we followed along, listening to the monitors. The first burst of applause came like a thunderclap. We were playing to a sold-out house! Adreneline increased, and suddenly I was warm and ready.

The four of us made our way to the stage level and waited in the semi-darkness. M and I commenced a waltz in the wings, my gypsy skirt flaring. I felt female and in my element, at the ready to perform.

The theme this summer, however, has not been focused on performing. It’s rather been about the opposite: letting it all hang loose, letting the unexpected meltdowns occur, honoring the rythyms of my grief.

Our cue came, and we followed the chorus out in front of the orchestra. S and E commenced their duet with M and I following 24 counts later, precise as math. Surprisingly I felt on-my-leg, solid, technically precise. I opened my face, I saw M and past him into the balconies, and I realized I hadn’t performed since the James Sewell Ballet season, along with my marriage, ended in May.

As gypsies we were mandated to be gritty, smarmy. In short, slutty.

What a relief!
A fitting end to this phase of my grief.

After the show there was a special dinner in the greenroom as this was the summer season closer. Near the end the conductor said a few words. Blah blah and then…just as I was sinking my teeth into another bite of dessert, there it was, the l-word: love. Suddenly this enormous enterprise, this anti-Fringe, was boiled down to this basic common denominator. I could have been at the Fringe, or anywhere. I was home.

It all, all of it, boils down to that. As merde gifts (Dancers say “merde” to one another before a show. “Shit” in French, this is good luck, so that you won’t say it onstage. Merde gifts, therefore, are good luck presents.) I had given heart shaped little dishes, for earrings or change or whatever. And I found myself saying, “… because my heart is getting bigger.”

Indeed. Its capacity grows a little each day. I don’t always feel this progress. But when my shirts are ill fitting, like on last Wednesday, I think this is why.

I have absorbed a mountain of hard news, and it has had to go somewhere. Sometimes I’ve felt like throwing up; I shed a bunch of salty tears, leaking out mostly as a solo. Still, a critical mass of emotion remains, and my heart chooses to absorb.

Evolution

2006-08-05T02:25:00.000-05:00

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is going on, and tonight, I saw the perfect show. Perfect in it’s utter sincerity and lack of talent. I don’t need to name names; we all know what I mean. It’s a show, the epitome of “fringy”, that’s so bad it’s good.

It began in earnest, with plastic costumes and folk music. I was smitten. I sat with R and knew she was feeling the same. There was no way I could walk out on this one; I had to see this glorious train wreck to the bitter end. Thankfully it used only ½ of it’s allotted time.

There I was in the dark, in the second row of a theater where I’ve performed, and my heart sang in flat accompaniment. These folks hit upon all the archetypes, or enough of them to bring us along. There was the king, the queen, the fallen-from-grace son, the Puck look-alike, the fool, the politician, the medicine woman and the innocent. Plus a maypole! And apples! It was relegion.

This is why I love the Fringe; this is why I’m on it’s board. It’s not to give more to those who already dominate our cultural landscape. It’s to give these folks a chance. It’s to commune with the church basement performers in all of us.

Tonight I witnessed a phase of evolution. From plastic may they graduate to organic materials and the know-how to deliver a line. Meanwhile I’ll continue to sit in the house, on the verge of tears, hoping that I can affect as profoundly.

Connections

2006-08-02T12:11:00.000-05:00

Today the theme emerging is about connections. I am in the midst of severing one of the most significant a person can have, that of a spouse.

My work has been in reestablishing my independence, reclaiming it, though really I had it all along. But it’s the bit about conducting one’s life with someone else in mind that trips me up. I always had J in mind, even when we spent time apart, which was often. So now, as I wander through grocery store aisles and DVD shelves at the library, who do I consider?

I feel a little lost. Who do I take care of now? (Not that I did such a hot job of taking care, but at times I did, when it was welcome.)

As I’m teaching so much this summer I remember that I can take care of my students. I can pass on to them my love and passion for dance. I can instill in them ideas about bravery and daring and musicality. But then I have to let it go and not caretake.

As dancers we are like warriors. We fight our worst enemy every day, ourselves. And so in this sense I take care of myself. I try to be gentle with my aging body and my youthful heart. As I carve enormous shapes into space, I aim not to pull apart but to hang together, like a mobile. With each connection my body makes it silently remembers all the times it connected before. The patterning began aeons ago, or so thirty years of dancing seems.

Connections. Within and without. Inside my own self then carried and shared out into the world. It is not lost on me, this magnificent opportunity, while I have only myself to consider, to widely connect. Link. Bond. Life to life and moment to moment. It will be through these sincere efforts that I will rediscover, reconsider myself. And so I give myself permission to go ahead, to not be afraid, to open and to receive. To give and then let go of the result. This is the hardest, and I must give it to myself: the gift of unconditional outcome.

Words

2006-08-01T08:35:00.000-05:00

I’m thinking about words, wondering if they’re more or less ephemeral than dance.

One of the reasons why I love dance so, why I love the performing arts in general, is this very ephemeral nature. Inherent, implicit in the concept, is that one will never encounter any particular set of circumstances again. All the world’s a stage, and as a result, everyone’s performing their show at the same time, and they all eventually melt away, upward, into the ether.

Lately I find myself very engaged with words, both well-thought-out and stream-of-consciousness ones. I find too that I want to hold on tight to them, like a lifeline or a home. And yet I know, from recent experience especially, that the tighter I try to grip, the sweatier my hands.

I am in the middle of watching “Casablanca”. Again. I’ve seen it about a million times. At the end of the first series of flashback scenes, Rick is standing, in the rain of course, at a train station waiting for Ilsa. She sends a note in her stead. We read it along with him, along with the rain as it washes her words away. Their meaning is grasped and is gone. Is the meaning gone or merely the words? Does the dance still exist, or is it just a slug’s slime trail, sort of sparkling on the concrete?

I still hold on tight. Words represent moments in time. They are our time capsules, our glimpses into our own histories and stories. Sometimes I take great comfort in re-reading my own thoughts. Maybe not from the fifth grade, but from five years ago, or from yesterday. I am unravelling my own mystery, seeing the pattern of my choices, connecting the dots.

Words inspire me when I choreograph. I often lead performers through a writing exercise where we select a few significant words from a personal writing and interpret them through movement. I’ve made many a dance launching from this pad. It’s effective in that it gets our collective, intellectual juices flowing. The movement is no longer about itself, it’s linked to a personal experience, a history. A herstory.

As I write this a heavy rain falls. I am reminded of the “Casablanca” image, and I wonder if all my words of late are washing away like Ilsa’s did, desperately and with music swelling?

Yet this rain is a relief, a new beginning, a break to a hot spell. I stand on my balcony, still wet, with lightning illuminating the sky. My stomach does a flip-flop, and my heart wonders if words truly bring people together or if the most we can attain is to be brought closer to ourselves? I’d like to think both. Words are what they are, we should take them at face value, and yet strive, with every fiber, to live up to them, the eloquent ones.

"Glorious Noise" and the Quest for the Holy Grail

2006-07-30T11:33:00.000-05:00

I’m thinking the Holy Grail, for all of us, as a concept, is Home. Since separating with my husband life has been boiled down to an essence which is this concept. Implicit in it, at least for me, is love, acceptance and art-making.

The other night I saw a show that astounded me in its sincere and sheer-will effort to exist: “Glorious Noise”. It played at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, the coolest, weirdest institution in town.

Rik Reppe wrote a show that dymanically intertwines soulful music and singing with stories, narratives, about his many and varied experiences at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, pre and post Katrina. (Or as the locals say, “the Bitch!”)

As a man who admits to running and seldom, if ever, stopping, Rik sure does read folks well and can spin a yarn that emanates Truth. That running part struck a chord in me. One of the complaints my husband had/has is this quality in me, my need to never stop for fear of atrophy, inertia or worse, actually confronting myself. Our separating, therefore, sent a shock-wave through my system, down to the core, so that now I have no choice but to allow inertia to occassionally set in, for about five minutes a stretch.

When I think about it, when I have an enlightened enough perspective, this is a real gift. And not just a thing. There is no accountable, tallyable value. It is the gift, the return, of the reins to my heart.

This is frightening to say the least. But then I remember. I can hitch my cart, and have all along, to my dancing, my art, the thing that, though I occassionally run away from it, I’m running toward. I’m just carving a wider circle to get to where I’m going. I therefore pick up along the way, not baggage, but life experience, depth, soul, compassion and grace. Pretty useful tools in the tool box.

As I engage in my current project of choreographing for MN Orchestra’s staged version of “Carmen”, I find that taking charge in the studio again, with trusted colleagues, is helping me get my groove back. I finished the piece last night. We have one more rehearsal, just us dancers, before we get with the musicians next week.

I literally created this thing backwards, starting with the last section, so now we’re all confused. What’s next? I know I know the steps; they’re in there somewhere. Art really does reflect life sometimes. Backwards, upside-down and, occassionally, underwater.

Which brings me back to “Glorious Noise”. There’s been this weird thing that’s come over me the past several years. It’s got something to do with my relationship to music. How, when it comes to popular music, non-dead-composer music, I clam up, shut down, get embarrassed. And so another gift I received the other night (as I found myself in the front row!) was that I received the full force of this home-grown music and my heart opened. Because it was shared with such generousity. It was welcoming, not intimidating. It was like one of the stories from the show: everywhere else, plans exclude. As in, “What are you doing tonight?” “Oh, I’m getting together with so-and-so and so-and so…” (You’re not invited!!!) Whereas in New Orleans a plan is an invitation. Call up four people to say you’re throwing some food on the grill and pretty soon you have forty-two.

That’s how it was with this music. It was an invitation and I accepted. One more bar down. One step further on my quest.

The joke is, this concept of home is a changeable thing. It’s slippery and elusive and electric, like an eel. It’s a riddle, a rhyme; it’s different every time. So I guess it becomes about keeping one’s finger on the pulse of what it reveals itself to be today, this moment. We lose it for awhile, but then it finds us, revealing itself through an encounter with a kindred spirit or in sitting in the blessed breeze on my balcony and just, sitting.

As these dog days of summer wind down, the temperature rises and, do I detect?, my spirits do too. My bare feet are touching ground again, returning from the nebulous (but necessary) floating of shock.

Whispering in the Dark

2006-07-25T22:53:00.000-05:00

During my recent second visit to New York City in as many months, I had the pleasure of seeing American Ballet Theatre again as their season at the Met wound down. They finished with a bang (or rather, a stab) with “Romeo and Juliet”, choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan and music by Sergei Prokofiev. The relationship of choreography to music, steps seemingly dictated by the score, pervades my memory of this performance.

I specifically arranged to see Alessandra Ferri as Juliet, in my mind the quintessential portrayer of loves’ youthful victim. In her forties, her embodiment of the character was complete. Jose Manuel Carreno played Romeo. His youthful bouancy was perfectly rendered, conveyed even in the simplest take off into a run toward his new love or away on an errand of revenge. Their coupling was utterly compatible, the choreography a vehicle for their expression.

Having seen Ferri with Julio Bocca probably fifteen years ago, I had high expectations. I recall that I had standing room tickets and that I sat eventually due to the generousity of tired patrons wanting to go home. This time around I and my friends had seats, albiet in the rafters, among the summering School of American Ballet students.

I sat next to J, my dancer girlfriend of fifteen years. We talked and giggled back and forth as the lights dimmed and the overture started. Like the adolescent girls in front of us, we kept this up throughout the entire performance. Some things will never change, little girls at the ballet being one of them. The Ballet, I am reminded, has the power to transport, to dispell the worries of the day. It turns us all into little girls again, whispering in the dark.

The ballroom scene was choreographically masterful in its simplicity. Very presentational and proper; one couldn’t help but tap out the famous musical refrain on one’s knee. This piece is occassionally played for our morning class grand battements, and I swear on those days I kick higher! This music commands one to dance bigger, higher, and so all the more brilliant of MacMillan to exercise such choreographic restraint. The tension thus created was perfect to accommodate the first meeting of our lovers.

I’m sorry to say I was disappointed in the balcony scene, the famous conclusion to Act I. I’m probably the only person on the planet not enamored by that music, for one thing, though the way it weaves through the ballet as a whole is masterful. This pas de deux seemed somehow too fast, too urgent. (Though Ferri’s leap off the last step toward Carreno was brave and hit just the right unabashed note.) In general there was no time for my eye to absorb the imagery.

The second act, however, was satisfying in the extreme. This was Carreno’s time to shine, along with the other lead men. The swordplay was real and therefore believable. I forgave some unmusical clashes given that these dancers were dealing with actual weapons. Safely above musicality, I always say.

As to musicality, the deaths of Mercuito and Tybalt brillantly represented and followed the score. These death scenes were therefore justified in going on and on, and they did. We followed every bump and stumble, every continuing joke of Mercutio. His music especially rode the line between comedy and tragedy. Tybalt, dying moments later, gets to use the stairs, and to great effect. The role was danced with elegant, aristocratic, upright, earthiness by Sascha Radetsky. One wanted to see him dance more, but we were nontheless satisfied with what he did do, how complete his role seemed. Satisfying too was Lady Capulet’s fierce greiving dance over Tybalt’s body. Stella Abrera channelled Martha Graham in her full-length gown and hood. Again, the music prescribed the dance. There’s something profound and deeply satisfying about movement to chords, which is what this solo mostly is. The curtain falls as she takes him in her arms and desperately attempts to rock him back to life.

Act III is the intimate heart of the piece. Ferri’s embodiment of the character came fully to life as she, ironically, preoccupies herself with death. Here we have the bedchamber pas de deux. Romeo and Juliet’s love is now knowing and complete. Little do they know that this is the last time they will see one another alive. The audience knows, however, marking this scene with bittersweet tension. Romeo flees before the house awakens.

Juliet is left contemplating how she can get out of marriage to Paris, the man her family has arranged for her. She sits on her bed as the music swells, reflecting the passage of time and a thought process. This moment did not work. I love the idea behind it, but in a house as big as the Met, not being able to read the changing emotions upon her face robbed the moment of it’s potency. It would have been more effective for Juliet to crawl backward upon the bed, into the darkness, then emerge, decision made. This decision is the fatal one, the one that sets up the inevitable conclusion. She runs to Friar Laurence who dispenses a magic potion that will cause her to fall into a “death-like sleep”.

Lady Capulet’s grief this time, at the discovery of Juliet’s seemingly dead body, is subdued, numb. This rang true for me; it seems fitting that a mother would initially respond this way. Again, it was in the score. Juliet is buried in the family tomb.

Romeo never receives the message that her death is a ruse. He is stunned by grief and rushes to the tomb disguised as a monk.

There lies Juliet on her back, her little legs pristinely together, her toes pointed, her arms stretched out in a V, palms down. She resembles a slumbering fairy, her dark hair spread around her head and her buttery chiffon dress at rest and also spread. We see the little girl behind the knowing woman. Perhaps we all revert to this state as we enter and return from sleep or death.

Romeo thinks she’s dead, and here we have what is to me the highlight of the production: the dance of death. Romeo heaves Juliets flaccid form into and out of positions they once executed as lovers. Ferri so believably plays dead that I wonder if she dances this particular section with her eyes closed. Carreno is desperate in his masterful partnering, ably handling her while continuing the believability of the drama. He is a beast untamed.

He eventually puts her down. Unconsoled, he drinks a vial of poison and dies. Juliet awakens and discovers his body. She quickly takes in the tragic misunderstanding and, like the youthful lover she is, sees no other option but to stab herself and join him in death. She ends in the archiest of backbends off the side of her gravestone, arcing toward Romeo and the loss of their pure love.

Brave New Torch Bearers

2006-06-27T10:25:00.000-05:00

When a dancer sets out to redefine him or herself, my heart skips a beat in empathy.

I just returned from Dance USA in beautiful, sunny Portland, Oregon, and this is in my thoughts as the cream of the conference rises to the top.

I am thinking specifically about Peter Boal, Atristic Director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. He is at the end of his first season in this position after twenty two years dancing with New York City Ballet. He impresses me with his quiet, passionate articulation. It came as a surprise to find him so committed to a sense of political responsibility. His modest roots beget a leftist American perspective, and it will be interesting to witness how that might manifest in his new position at the top of one of our country’s major ballet companies.

During the last several years of his tenure with City Ballet he founded Peter Boal and Dancers, and I caught one of his programs a few years ago at the Joyce. It was a solo venture. He commissioned three choreographers to create three new solos for him that would fit nicely together as a complete program. The thought of seeing Peter Boal in the intimate setting of that “downtown” venue was almost like contemplating seeing a fish escape its water. Perhaps the reality was a little true. And perhaps because of that, the performance came across as very brave. I wonder what he would cite as the more intimidating: his first performance of a major role at the State Theater or this, at the Joyce? My guess is the latter. This is his bright idea; he soley is responsible, and he could fall flat.

He did not fall flat though the evening was flawed. The three works did not particularly speak to one another as was his hope. What I took away was a sense of pride in a fellow dancer (whose many friends were clearly supporting him in the audience) who dared to break out of his indidgenous environment.

(“Fellow dancer”- how presumptuous of me to say, but actually it’s true. Although our statuses and experiences are remarkably different, we are the same animal, cut from the same cloth; a dancer is a dancer.)

I think too about Christopher Stowell, Artistic Director of Oregon Ballet Theatre. When he retired from San Francisco Ballet after sixteen years, he initially wanted to get out of the field. He explored possibilities in the opera world, and I can imagine his generous curiousity taking him far. Awhile into that exploration the opportunity arose which led to his current position. Again, a brave and individual choice to break out, to redefine. It led back to dance, to directing a company, but perhaps that opportunity wouldn’t have arisen had he not distanced himself. He made room so that he could return.

As I heard him tell anecdotes about his work with his dancers, it became clear that he is most respectful and sensitive. It was disarming to hear how his feelings were hurt when a dancer began treating him differently after his casting choice for a particular role didn’t include her. I suspect his well-rounded sense of self keeps him grounded and able to negotiate the rocky terrain of inter-personal dynamics.

And I think about my own Artistic Director, James Sewell. After six years with Feld Ballets NY he broke away, daring to found his then pick-up company James Sewell Dance in the unstable (at best) environment that young companies are up against. I remember hearing about his maverick choreography. I knew of him through a mutual friend, and when an audition came along I jumped. Something about him and his work spoke to me that day, and this dialogue continues as I embark on my thirteenth season with the company, now James Sewell Ballet. I know him as a human and feel an affinity as a dancer. That break-away spirit continues, and I do my utmost as a dancer to encourage it, to be present in the moment when that spark ignites. What an honor to be choreographed upon by someone who wears his struggles on his sleeve.

It strikes me that these men are torch bearers. Dancers are following them into this next dance moment of the ballet world specifically. I am heartened that they wear their mantles of leadership out of a sense of rising to the occasion and not out of any egomaniacal motivation. I know with James this translates as a sense of collaborative respect in the room. We are all working toward the same goal and through that, we grapple with satisfying our individual ones. I hopefully suspect that an akin dymanic exists at PNB and OBT.

Finally, I think about my own urges to break out, to roll around on the floor instead of turning up on my toes. I am inexpressibly lucky that I have been able to do both these things and more. I am a self divided: a practicioner and lover of ballet (the definition of “amateur” is: lover of), an identifier with modern dance, a choreographer, a teacher and recently, a writer. How will this all ultimately fit together?

This conference got me thinking, and as yet I don’t know where it will lead. I am glad I went, though I am dissatisfied. I walked around Portland and I felt half present, half capable, like my brain couldn’t settle on the appropriate word for something. On the tip of my tongue. This is how it begins I know. Soon I will break away again, and I have many examples paving the way.

Home Too

2006-06-21T19:29:00.000-05:00

A couple months ago I wrote a piece called “Home” wherein I recapped James Sewell Ballet’s recent performances at the Joyce Theater and mused about NYC and Minneapolis, the primary places where pieces of my heart reside.

As I face the necessity of moving from my house back into an apartment due to separating with my husband, I reexamine the question of home and as always, how it relates to dance.

Home is where the heart is. Indeed. And so my home is at the barre, on the floor of a studio (preferably wood), in my house that soon I will be leaving (along with its wood floors), in my new apartment that is perfect and has a balcony, back in Ohio where several of my family buoy me from afar, down in Charleston, SC where others of my family do the same. My home is always with my mother (currently of the Charleston crew). My home is NYC: walking the streets, knowing the grid and the train lines like the back of my hand. My home is the back of my hand and my palm and my fingers and their nails, not so well kept these days as I pack and organize and stress. My home is this computer: my documents, my email account; it is a life-line certainly. My home is my Buddhist practice. My home is my cat. It is my backyard and my bathroom and my bed. It is my husband.

And all these things change. From the barre to the studio floor to the relationship, life has the power to shift our terrain when we least expect it. Good thing I’m fast on my feet.

I’m fast on my feet, lighter than air, smoother than silk. I can sing out of tune and dance to make you cry. In this process of (re)defining home I uncover hidden skills and lean into them like safety nets. I am creating a new cocoon, a new regime. My home is shifting and shapeless and these are the new order.

So what to hold on to? Well, still the barre. Sometimes the bar. My feet plant on the studio floor and will soon sink into the carpet of my new place. I will dance on the tiles of my new kitchen and get splinters from my new balcony.

Home is my past as I unearth many papers in my effort to pack. Myself appeares to me, and I’ve been here all along: in a zipped-up suitcase that I haven’t been brave enough to open. Reading my own words and those of others, I discover that I struggle with the same old issues, but from a slightly more elevated perspective as I move around the spiral of experience. I’m dizzy from so much rotating. My goal becomes to let go anyway, to allow the motion sickness to set in; it’s better than stagnation. As I’ve said before, stillness is the scariest thing for a dancer.

I Thought This Was Over

2006-06-08T14:10:00.000-05:00

Late the other night I received an e-mail from a friend and colleague about a fellow dancer from our salad days in NYC. He is dying of AIDS.

I thought this was over. I am of the generation just past the one where everyone died, or so I thought.

G was a puppy. We auditioned for Michael Mao Dance together and that’s where we met. We made eyes at one another in an I’d-like-to-dance-with-you kind of way. In the smallish warm-up studio, filled with dancers, G literally broke into a ménage of coupe jetes (big, huge leaps in a circle) by way of a warm up. No kidding. He was that eager and green.

We danced together for almost two years. He was hyperactive and highly nervous. He couldn’t keep still. He had a huge laugh. He was president of our club of folks whose boyfriends had been to or were in jail. (Again, no kidding.)

He got into Mark Morris Dance Group and I just saw him perform last winter here in Minneapolis. Before me was the same bounding puppy but older and physically integrated in the way that happens when a dancer is always working and performing.

This news puts life into perspective. As I negotiate my first real tragedy, my divorce, I look to G and whisper a promise to do it well, to live life large. I am exhausted from operating from a place of fear; I am tired of only feeling open hearted onstage.

That T-shirt saying is true: Life is not a dress rehearsal. I want to wear all my best clothes and stop keeping them in the back of the closet. Every occasion is a special one.

As G lies dying in a NYC hospital bed I reach across time and distance, extending my two hands and my one heart toward his easy passing. As the promises of my wedding day melt upward to reside in the ether I make another one here. It is to myself, to always love, honor and obey my own heart.

I Am Petrouchka

2006-05-31T08:12:00.000-05:00

Last Friday night I saw Julio Bocca perform the title role in Petrouchka. Probably the last time I'll see him perform. He's retiring at the end of American Ballet Theater's current season at the Met.

I have never seen the ballet that had its premiere in Paris in 1911. Created for Diaghilev's Ballet Russes by Fokine with music by Stravinsky and sets and costumes by Benois, Nijinsky famously played Petrouchka, the sad, mechanized puppet.

ABT did a respectable job of conjuring the spirit of this masterpiece. The crowd scenes successfully guided our eyes to the significant action. What would in a movie musical be camera direction was here a feat of choreographic craftsmanship. In the midst of this activity the three puppets were revealed, suspended on racks so their limbs could execute the signature floppy movements of marionettes. Stella Abrera as the Ballerina Doll perfectly rode the line between loose limbs and arched feet. Not an easy feat. But it was Bocca who stunned from the very beginning. His puppet was turned-in and knock-kneed. His sad demeanor read into the rafters. His tilted head conveyed his attitude; I didn't need to see his facial expressions though I would have liked to.

The second scene revealed Petrouchka in his cell, an irregularly shaped space with high walls. His solo was subtle bravura in the extreme. It mostly took place on his knees or moving from down to up and down again. What was virtuosic was the musicality and storytelling. Bocca suspended his usual implicit technique and instead let us into his inner-world, into his imagination, into the brave place that is scary for all performers, stillness.

Petrouchka adores the Ballerina Doll. She is uncomprehending of this. Next we see her in a love duet with the third puppet, the Moor. Petrouchka disturbs them; the chase is on.

Back at the square we are entertained once again by the crowd and passing street performers. We see the puppets fumble behind the curtain of their theater and emerge engaged in their chase. The Moor suddenly and awkwardly slices Petrouchka's neck; our hero falls. The crowd is aghast as they move into a semi circle around him. With perfect musicality Petrouchka twitches first his upper half then his lower half, the final death expirations. His last breath is a flop upstage, concealing his sad face.

The crowd completely encircles this time. They are stunned and also morbidly fascinated, like rubbernecking at an accident. The Charlatan/Puppet-Master enters and, deducing what happened, realizes he must fool the crowd into thinking that all along Petrouchka was just sawdust and rags. He picks up the body and indeed, Bocca flops in the Charlatan's arms. And then my heart skipped a beat. It wasn't Bocca at all but, indeed, a rag-doll. When the crowd surrounded him that second time the switch was made. It is shocking that I can still be so moved by the magic of dance and its use of theatrics. That moment is one I will never forget, and for more reasons than one.

Two weeks into my separation with my husband I too feel as though I've been replaced by a rag-doll, and when I was least expecting it. Thankfully I also have a crowd surrounding me, my community, near and far, of friends and family, standing by for when I will inevitably need them.

My Ballerina Doll equivalent, my husband, is not uncomprehending. He is doing what he must. I continue to adore him. But I do not chase and anyway there is no third party. This is a dance for two and we’re riding it out.

At the end of the ballet, as the Puppet Master carries the rag-doll off, the ghost of Petrouchka, the real Bocca, rises up above the puppet theater for a final gasp of life before he flops over limp, his arms swinging. Is that a death swing or merely hibernation before rebirth? The audience will never know as just then the curtain closes.

Behind my curtain I too am flopped over, slumped with my arms swinging. I swing and slump. I dance alone. Eventually I will step down from my puppet theater and revive. In addition to the rag-doll, I am also the Puppet Master.

Texture

2006-05-13T11:47:00.000-05:00

If I had to sum up Iceland in a word, the title of this essay would be the one. From gravel to water, rock to steel, silk to wool…topography, fashion, architecture…texture rules and is celebrated in the most understated of ways. It just is, as integral as motion to a dancer.

James Sewell Ballet just returned from a week in Iceland and as I negotiate my jet lag I let my thoughts wander, congealing that country’s singularity with our performing there and my own dancing in general.

I am still culture shocked. I never thought I’d fall in love with a place that wasn’t cobblestoned and cute. Reykjavik is an urban village. Situated on the sea, the multicolored houses attempt to bring cheer to the stark, mostly corrugated steel building exteriors. The bright colors are like red lipstick on a pale blonde, accentuating the paleness and ice blue eyes even more.

Our venue, Austurbae, was on the edge of the city center, one block off the main drag. The raked stage was a surprise and so ridiculous that we simply made the adjustment. The marley floor was brand new, purchased just for us. The theater was no frills at its finest and quickly became home for three days. We performed to three sold out audiences who expressed their appreciation with unison clapping. It was truly a thrill to bow to the folks of a nation so notoriously remote and cold yet who were so clearly enjoying themselves.

We performed the ballets we took to NY, a smart choice as they were such a part of us we could spare some brainpower and physical energy on negotiating our surroundings, foreign in every way. It is quite something to get “in body” in another country. No matter where we are, we always take our instruments with us and can theoretically access them at will. A plie will always be a plie and there is great comfort in that, especially when faced with nothing else familiar.

On Sunday we traveled into the interior with our host, Jon, the epitome of Viking stoic. In the country I’ve never seen or experienced such barren ripeness, such strange beauty. To be out in it, amid the elements, was primal and glorious. I wanted to live the motto on my T-shirt: Lost in Iceland. Words to describe the day: water, coins, feather, spongy grass, rugged rock, wild horses, mom-and-pop spa, extreme temperature changes, windswept hair, glowing skin, naps in the van, vitality, camaraderie, rainbow, exhaustion.

On Monday Brittany, Sally and I took class with the Iceland Dance Theater as arranged by go-getter Brit. It was a treat and the ultimate way to engage in a culture: to do such a work-a-day activity. We were warmly received and felt right at home when we were told to do our own plies, JSB’s standard initiation into class. The rest of the day was spent fitting in all that we hadn’t done yet. Too much to achieve in too little time but here are my highlights: exploring the Reykjavik Art Museum Hafnarhus (a warehouse renovation reminiscent of the Tate Modern in London), seeing the swans on lake Tjornin, being alone with the light in the bell tower at the top of Hallgrimskirkja church, (the structure that literally took my breath away when I turned a corner and saw it in the rain five days prior), being recognized on the street, playing Icelandic Scrabble with James and Sally over a bottle of wine and french fries.

The day we left we went to the Blue Lagoon, a man made swimming hole/paradise. Here is where I felt that I was on Mars. It is so reassuring to know that there are such surprises in the world. I was in store for one more…

As we flew home I had a window seat again. We flew over Greenland and my heart swelled at its extreme, remote and almost-lifeless majesty. Then mile upon mile of floating ice: flat, white and stark against the steel blue water, I got an idea for my next dance. I pulled out my journal and turned my mind to coming home.

Spring Season

2006-04-24T11:42:00.000-05:00

We just finished our spring season here in Minneapolis and as usual after a good run I am empty and full at the same time. I will miss the ballet “Serenade” in particular (refer to previous blog: Serenade and a Solo), the perfect companion piece to “Awedville”, James and Sally’s collaborative, character-based prop-monster of a touching piece.

In “Serenade” I have a solo that settles on my heart a little more with each performance. In dancing it I somehow feel as though I’m conquering hang-ups I’ve long cultivated as a dancer. It’s no secret that I struggle with classical ballet and yet I am fairly adept at double pirouettes, have decent feet and a solid pointe technique. I nevertheless clam up at the thought of me, en pointe, doing anything by myself. It was with this frame of mind that I entered into the creative process with James. He began by having me improvise to different sections of the music, Schoenberg’s Serenade, Op. 24. This was sort of like torture: me feeling like I was doing the same old thing, falling into the same old movement patterns, my feet killing me. But on the day we actually started crafting James had settled on a piece of music and I could open my heart. I loved it from the start and the way the piece begins, me building up to standing on one leg, progressively lengthening and unfolding my limbs and finally turning my head, is musically and choreographically perfect. That opening passage is a movement haiku.

Why do I love it so much? It is quirky without falling into cloying or cuteness. The quirks become character and I feel more creature than human…so that when a human gesture finally arrives, me pushing down my arm and looking straight out into the audience, it is extra potent for the lack of it prior. There are a lot of looks straight out into the audience. This was fun for me to play with, to dare myself to do with frank straightforwardness. The creature image came in handy here; I was looking out not as myself but as this other being.

The solo is long enough, four minutes or so, that when inevitable imperfections occur I can make up for them later; I can redeem myself. This is rare. In a classical context one is given a minute-long variation and if it doesn’t go perfectly the audience and performer are left with a less-than-satisfied taste in their mouths. Not so with this neo-classical solo. James told me to play with it, to explore timing and execution. And so I felt free, nervous, but free. I felt the sort of nervous that is perfect: just enough to get my adrenaline pumping but not enough to debilitate. I looked forward, with butterflies in my stomach, to dancing it. What a gift.

In “Awedville” I play a sad little clown that wants to be a ballerina. I enter in a fat suit, am made fun of and tortured, ending with the revealing of my little yellow tutu with pom-pom balls on it. This could not be cuter or sadder. I love this character. I also love the collective end of the ballet. We have all stripped away our costumes and thus our “character flaws”, and strive together toward a bare neutral where we can feel safe to do nothing but be ourselves, all together. We revise individual movement motifs and then begin to dance in unison as the music swells, tipping our invisible hats to the grand idea that is “Show Business” and all that it represents. We whirl individually, boureeing in circles as we listen to the secrets the universe has to tell, our hands cupped around our ears, raptly listening. One by one we pile onto one another in an image reminiscent of Matisse paintings: flesh bodies against a blue backdrop, intertwined and innocently sensual. The curtain slowly closes as the Bernstein score still, unbelievably, continues.

Striving Toward an Easy Virtuosity

2006-04-16T12:43:00.000-05:00

In class today I marveled at what it is we do, every day. We take this ballet class and when we get a certain amount along in the ranks we get fewer and fewer corrections. The daily experience becomes largely about self-care: self-correcting and self-acceptance.

Right now, as I continue to negotiate my back, I begin by concentrating on correct, unforced placement. Since my injury manifests where spine meets pelvis, I’ve lost some flexibility and ability to rotate in my hips. (Not that I had much to start with!) My first position is a defiant L if not an outright V. No straight lines for this girl, and interestingly, I can get in touch with my turnout faster and can begin to better use what I have. From this conservative physical place I have a fighting chance of “working it”, of cultivating increased and healthy turnout throughout the class. I am thankfully in a company where I can do this, where I can be trusted to give my body what it needs. This is not the ballet tradition.

As dancers (as women specifically, I think, as we are a dime a dozen in this art form) it is ingrained in us not to question but to simply do! And so we have the potential to remain childlike in the workplace, taking orders and stifling our thoughts. (This is the ballet tradition.) Great inner lives are cultivated in this way but it is not my cup of tea.

My goal is to forever be a student, to maintain an attitude of open-minded receptivity. Simultaneously, I give myself permission to take some things with a grain of salt, to see the other side of an opinion. Here’s the catch: balancing being a student while retaining the physical clarity that one is a professional: one must be oneself; one must commit to individualisms, singularities, quirks. I’ll never forget my summer in NYC studying Taylor. Mary Cochran suddenly yelled out, “You guys aren’t weird enough!” This is the challenge, the balancing act, of the student who is professional.

I must muster the confidence to keep my sights on my own potential, to believe in my dancing through the inevitable bleak patches. There are many plateaus as we ebb and flow between studio and stage. The many one-night stands we do on tour are gratifying in their way but are immensely draining, sapping us of consistency. We must therefore develop consistency internally, being true to ourselves and the dancers we, hopefully, know ourselves to be.

So in class today I didn’t get much in the way of external attention but I was ok with that. Today I was at peace with that because I was able to give attention to myself. I remained calm and I danced with ease and simplicity. Increasingly these are my goals. Yes, I want to continue to strive toward virtuosity, but mostly I want freedom and ease, to be able to fill out a still moment and not feel anxious, like I should be “doing something”. I want to simply stand on my own two feet and not wobble. I want to take barre barefoot and put pointe shoes on for center and have this transition, this earthquake of a change, feel seamless and organic. I want to be able to curve my spine and swing my head and in the next breath stop on a dime, fully erect and “balletic”. I think about these things as I take class. They take practice and patience and persistence. Some days I have all those things, some days none of them. But I keep going anyway, traversing whatever plateau I’m now one, hoping to spy the next one higher up.

The ultimate hope is that these skills will transfer to the stage: ease of feeling, patience, self-acceptance. From my vantage point, for what it’s worth, I see that I am slowly, with the pace of a turtle, (my first word!) beginning to incorporate these ideas, these ways of being and thinking, into my performing. I want performing to be like daily life, not so pressured and precious but an everyday kind of ritual with depth instead of pomp.

Home

2006-04-13T21:14:00.000-05:00

As I sit outside in my backyard with a view of the Minneapolis skyline I am restlessly content and reflective. JSB returned from New York at the beginning of the week and has resumed work on ballets to be performed here in town next weekend. What of NYC? Success…

… amongst hardship and even a little tragedy. Our schedule was gruesome as we had multiple events a day. (On opening night we had tech/dress and a photo shoot.) And yet we were prepared for this. We put ourselves onto the top of the rollercoaster and controlled the inevitable fall as best we could. Sara arrived with a hip aggravation and left with a stress fracture. Thank goodness she didn’t dance beyond opening night. I’m so glad she trusted saying no. Sometimes saying no is actually saying yes, to a bigger plan, further away.

The sky turns pink as I write; it is almost 8 PM.

We left a cold and rainy Minneapolis and arrived in spring-like NYC. I lucked into the right side of the plane for seeing the skyline prior to landing. Ain’t nothing like it and it always conjures nostalgia and longing; a deep, primal energy wells up. I lived there from 1989-1994 with many summers pre and post. It has been a home to me and a part of my heart will always reside there. To return and perform at the Joyce is like a homecoming of sorts. I feel cocooned by friends and family. (My mother lives there as well as friends who are, indeed, family.)

So Sara took care of her body and the rest of us rose to the occasion of filling in her parts. Three of us mainly did this: Sally, James and I, and so Wednesday became about triage. Sara supported us the whole way, negotiating the terrain between the wings, the dressing rooms and the house. We performed with our hearts and got better with every run. I think we were perceived as a company with heart, humanity and humor.

I remained an extra day to spend time with my mom. We had a great time catching up; I had a great time being a pedestrian. We went to the Eduard Munch exhibit at the MoMA which was magnificent. His work is very touching as he so completely wears his heart on his sleeve. He is known to have said something like, “ I don’t paint what I see; I paint the memory of what I see.” I love that. That sentiment leaves room for personal reflection, for subjective influence, for impressions. Therefore specific moments aren’t so precious. The pressure to create an exact replica is lifted.

That’s what I aim to achieve as a dancer. I am no longer aiming to duplicate or imitate. I am engaged in the life-long intention of giving my impression. That’s where the art comes in for me.

It is night now. The buildings sparkle and reflect into one another. I think about NYC, how much I love it, even long for it at times, but know that here is where I am truly home. I came here and became an artist. Here is where I learned (am still learning!) that it is safe to take a breath and stop imitating. Here is where I met my amazing husband who can do his art in a way not possible elsewhere. Here is where we have our house, our 1925 stucco that has a backyard view of the city. Here is where my heart is though pieces will forever remain scattered.

My Beautiful Spine

2006-04-02T12:27:00.000-05:00

As we of JSB embark on our second run at the Joyce in as many years, I am reflecting on then, now, and the state of my spine.

During a lay-off a few weeks ago I got an MRI to finally know what’s going on in there. The deal is I have degenerative disc disease between L5 and S1 (essentially where spine meets pelvis) and also an annular tear. Scary words but I have been assured that this is somewhat par for the course and to “let pain be (my) guide”.

This is a tricky negotiation as the pain differs widely day to day. I am also trying to be drug free; alas, I am going back on Celebrex for the Joyce. Thank goodness it exists.

Prior to the MRI I had basic x-rays taken. They revealed nothing as the damage is in the soft tissue. But here’s the gift: I saw my spine and it is beautiful. It is straight and gracefully curved with perfect spaces in between the meeting points of bone. It was pure white, solidly white on the translucent x-ray film. I carry that image with me into this physically intense and emotionally demanding week at the Joyce (the pinnacle venue of its size for regional companies like ours).

All of us have something going on, either physically, emotionally or both. In that sense we are all in this together. We have the power to carry one another, quite literally, through these performances safely and with the utmost integrity and artistry.

“Anagram” is first on the program and its’ first movement is like threading a needle. It is not the super-hero like beginning of “Moving Works”, our opener last time. This is a delicate revealing, with James soloing and improvising on material from the highly crafted piece. He brings us out one by one and we commence our lemon chiffon dance. My goal is to use my head with abandon, nail my double pirouettes, and keep my face sincere and full of light. The second movement is sublime, a trio for Benjamin, Sally and Justin. (Refer to previous blog, “Inheriting Roles-Implicit in Ballet.) The final movement is fast and slow, a true re-cap, a cool down. My favorite moment is laying down in a swoon.

Here’s the hard part: we have a five minute pause in which to strip pointe shoes, pink tights and dresses and peel on skin-tight, acid green unitards with long sleeves. These things are hard to put on in any circumstance, let alone a sweaty one. We’ll all be staying upstairs for that quick-change; modesty can resume next week. This is preparation for “Involution”, our polar opposite of “Anagram”, our effort to connect with ourselves, each other and the audience, every time. The piece is special in that it is a genuine experience. We embark on actual physical struggles that lead us into isolation. We hit rock bottom and slowly, like the beginning of new life, we bubble up, new yet experienced. The ending is always different and always startlingly perfect.

Intermission then “Guy Noir: The Ballet”, a character piece with a Garrison Keillor voice-over. (Yes, he collaborated with us, revealed his red socks, and brought us chocolate.) I play Martha Isadora, an over-the-top modern dancer/drama queen. The best is when Justin, Nic and I can’t keep straight faces for laughing at one another. The scream in the blackout is mine.

That’s our program. It couldn’t be more varied. By the end, the audience will know each of us. My hope is that they won’t believe that we’re the same dancers James brought onstage two hours ago. We want to bring them on our journey and let them leave with a piece of each of us.

To those reading between April 4th and the 9th, send energetic and healing thoughts our way. Here we go…

Editing while Maintaining (and Revealing) the Soul of a Piece

2006-03-15T20:40:00.000-06:00

I am finally in the process of editing my concert of last fall, my first full evening of work. It was a long time coming and so has been this editing process.

This is a learning experience on many levels and is proving to be an unexpected gift. I am seeing my work in new ways, with new eyes. I am up close and personal with it in a way that I’ve never allowed myself to experience before. What do I mean by that…? I think I mean that when I usually view my work it in some ways is with that wince that we all experience when we hear our voices on our answering machines. Do I really sound like that? Ouch! And yet there is this weird fascination, once we get past our lack of objectivity.

One is probably never truly objective about one’s work and that’s probably a blessing. But in a way, given that I am only now, in March, editing work performed in September, I have a certain distance, a certain ability to stomach it.

So there we are, my amazing editor and me, sitting in the half-darkness of his crowded and technology covered studio. I am inches away from two different screens. One depicts what he’s doing, the final versions of what we are editing. The other screen is controlled by me and shows side-by-side images of my dances: one close-up and on an angle and one centered and wide. The recordings are from two different nights and therein lies the game we play: synching dance to dance, movement to movement, moment to moment, breath to breath.

Though endlessly frustrating and TIME CONSUMING, there is a certain beauty about this process and I find that I am touched in a way that is hard to express…

I am, I think, foremost moved by the earnest performances of the dancers. It’s true: they rallied for me. The five performances over the weekend of September 8-11 were without dysfunction. Seeing them all again now, on screens repeating moments again and again, I say a silent acknowledgement of thanks to each of them.

I am made aware of the true art of editing. It is viscerally satisfying to achieve a good edit, to take a passage from a piece and make it larger than life, to bring the audience with you, on a journey. I am editing to reveal what is fundamental about any given piece, not to preserve the choreography. This was a brick wall I traversed, with the help of my editor. After all, what’s the use of working with him if not to let him do what he does best? The choreography is safely preserved in my wide-shots. I am here to tell a bigger story.

I make choices like: showing Stephanie in the corner, smaller than anything, to offer context and express her vulnerability; like a cross-fade on myself, just as my head peers through my arms, creating intimacy and expressing shyness; and like sacrificing the group section in order to focus on the tense muscularity of a certain couple of dancers, creating depth of stage-picture as we watch the sinews at work.

In short, I am sold on this process, this experience of editing; I wouldn’t have missed it. It is the ultimate taking of responsibility of and for one’s work. The choreographic process continues and deepens and defies mediums. There, indeed, ain’t nothing like the real thing. But when live is not available, this, I’m coming to discover, can satisfy.

Grandpa

2006-03-05T12:28:00.000-06:00

My grandpa called the other night to say goodbye. After 98 years he is ready to go. What does this have to do with dance? Everything…

As far back as I can remember in my life as a dancer Grandpa has always been respectful and inquisitive about the fact that I danced. I would sit in the backseat of my grandparent’s car and answer question after question about the specifics of my after school life: how many hours, how many pointe shoes, why I did it at all. I could tell he was attempting to make it concrete for himself. It was the furthest thing from his experience. Maybe that’s why he took it and me seriously: he had no preconceived negative notions.

When I started choreographing he really perked up. Though he had always been proud of me, somehow the fact that I was making my own dances made even more concrete sense to him. I suspect he finally felt as though I had a future beyond my dancing years; he could stop worrying. (Little did he know how choreographers rely on “soft money” and the funding whims of the grant bestowing community!)

At 5’ 2 1/4” tall I have always wondered why I am not taller. My mother is 5’6” and my father is about 6’ tall. Grandpa was 6’2” or something close to that. I guess I got my height from Grandma who also was 5’2”. Grandpa was sort of massive in a slim kind of way, akin to Jimmy Stewart and in more ways than one. He always maintained a sense of humor about himself and life in general. Even during last week’s phone call he cracked a joke, something about us expecting him to live another 100 years. Indeed, no. Let him continue to live in our collective memories and in this reflection.

So he was this tall man against my short womanhood. His last plane trip was to attend my wedding in the summer of 2000. Slightly shrunken, he still maintained a sense of his former magnitude. It was not long after that that he lost the first of his legs. He handled the entire enterprise with strength and grace. I’m sure he had been proud of his stature; it must have played a part in how he self-identified. Within two years he lost his other leg and officially became “shorter” than me.

My mom was broken up about this. Initially I think she thought he thought he was but a shadow of his former self. Perhaps this is true. He never let on though. He maintained his erect posture and worked up the strength to sling his body from bed to wheelchair and back again. This is the constitution I’ve inherited.

Around the time that he lost his second leg I was commissioned by James Sewell Ballet to choreograph a new work that became “Witness”. Inspired by Grandpa I made a solo that evolves into a duet that lies at the heart of the piece. There is a red chair center stage and a woman (initially Peggy Seipp-Roy and later, me) draped across it on her knees. For the duration of that section she never is upright. All of her movements and posturing are floor-bound, on or around the chair, in relationship to it in some way. It is her support, her point of reference, her security blanket. At the end of the section her partner takes the chair away and the image we are left with is the woman balancing on her knees.

Grandpa saw this piece on video. I didn’t tell him that he inspired that particular section. Maybe he got it, maybe not. The point is that I shared it with him at all. Even though, as I imagine, my creating and performing life remained somewhat of a mystery to him (even after all the questions), he valued my work unconditionally. That he “got” it will never be the point.

I think this issue will ring true for a lot of dancers. Most of us probably feel like the black sheep of our families. It is depressing and exhausting to perpetually feel misunderstood about what to us is vital and elementary. So it’s all the more special that I never felt put upon by answering Grandpa’s questions. They were so sincerely asked and reflected upon that I began to see that it was my duty to my form to share as specifically and generously as I could. Dance needs to welcome the outside in.

As I age, I negotiate my ever-changing body and it’s daily inconsistencies. What’s going on with my lower back and do I need an MRI? I am 35 after all and wonder for the first time about my body’s ability to keep on keeping on. At this moment, after having several good-back days in a row I choose to put my energy and faith into Grandpa’s example. I will remain erect and graceful about whatever the situation reveals. I will determinedly do the necessary work to stay on top this insinuating physical insult.

I carry in my head and in my heart the words he expressed to me last week. I am keeping them to myself but here’s what I can share: as he spoke I felt buoyed by his words, knowing that he was speaking truth. I know with a greater degree of assuredness that I am on the right path for my life and that I will always identify as a dancer in some way. I read between the lines of his words and determine that I will continue to choreograph, to educate and now, to write. By strengthening these others I will protect and support the practicing dancer in me.

Grandpa is still with us but I may never speak with him again. I am so glad for the fact that, as gracefully as ever, he has come to terms with his own death. The rest of us are given this window of time in which to come to terms with it too. Soon the red chair will be taken away and he will be safely balancing, solo. Blackout: new section begins.

"Serenade" and a Solo

2006-02-22T08:58:00.000-06:00

February 22, 2006

Last weekend James Sewell Ballet premiered a new ballet, “Serenade”, to Schoenberg’s music of the same name. We performed it at the Ordway in Saint Paul with the magnificent Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

This is a good ballet. It is one of James’ most technical with many multiple turns following many more and at top speed. It is something to sink ones teeth into; we as a company are just beginning to investigate this one.

And yet there is something magical about the raw reality of a brand new piece. I think it’s very special, seeing all the edges and vulnerabilities. Our task is usually to make it look easy and yet there’s a rough-and-tumble quality to a premiere that’s endearing. At least, that’s how I choose to look at it. (I give other performers this leeway too.)

Indeed, on Friday night the piece was rough yet ready and it was a thrill to perform to a sold out Ordway. One of the most beautiful venues in the Midwest, it has hosted several highlights of my career: MN Opera’s “Nixon in China” last June is foremost in my mind.

“Serenade” is largely an ensemble piece. Nine of us negotiate the stage in strict formation, defining our respective roles in any given yet particular pattern so as to bring to light a certain something in the score. Oh what music! This piece has surely grown on me. It is exacting and masterful. My naïve ear witnesses history as I listen to the a-tonal perfection. James rose to and met this choreographic challenge. The ballet invents as many steps as it exploits standard ones. In the same breath we are doing those recognizable multiple turns then lumbering on the floor on the way to crouch between another dancer’s legs, our feet inelegantly yet brilliantly ginched.

This choreography, perhaps more than James’ other work, pays homage to Balanchine. I see this especially in the pas de deux for him and Sally. They flow in and out of irregularity and classicism with precision and clarity. It is en pointe and totally in control. It is funny and respectful. It is deadpan with an inner secret.

I have a solo. A SOLO. It is very special to me and I look forward to delving deeper into it even as I sit now in relative satisfaction at the recent memory of performing it. Sally likens it to Paul Taylor dancing in Balanchine’s “Episodes-Part II”. Here’s what happened…In 1959 Balanchine and Martha Graham were slated to collaborate on a new work with music by Anton Webern. In fact the choreographers worked entirely independently of one another. Each created a section: she Part I, and he Part II. The “collaboration” came into play in that she used three City Ballet dancers and he used Paul Taylor who was in her company at the time. Paul had a solo, created in four one-hour rehearsals. (Paul did a lot of homework.)

So Sally makes this comparison and my heart thrills: I knew my solo was important. Home I go to refer to my books; I remember reading about the incident in PT’s autobiography “Private Domain”. There it was again. The way-with-words PT has is old-fashioned, charming, I am drawn right in to his history and somehow feel that I am extending it’s life through my solo.

I enter the space cross fading with Justin and Brittany. He is carrying her off in a slumped-over lift and so James instructed me to enter slumped over too. (One of the many references to evolution in the piece.) My step quickens as I straighten up toward center stage, hoping the conductor won’t start til I’m placed and stilled. I stand on one leg (not a forte) and gesture coolly. Yet here is where I open my heart to the audience. Perhaps I can give them a way in to this perplexing music and these esoteric steps. Thus the dance begins and I am at once balletic and modern. In my pointe shoes I am doubled over and distorted. I attempt to channel PT as I strike a balance. Never having seen “Episodes”, I instead conjure his solo from “Aureole”, that brilliant use of stillness as he balanced in second position releve for a whole phrase of music. James threw one of those in for me too: a crouched stare at the audience, stillness while the music ends a phrase.

PT writes about his feeling the need to dutifully represent the modern dance community in 1959. Then the ballet and modern camps were distinct and separate. Now those lines are blessedly blurred and I stand in the vortex. That is my goal, my reason for dancing and expressing. To me dance is dance and ballet is as every day as my legs are low. I am unconventional and yet, in the words of Lincoln Kirsten to PT, I hope to have a “maverick talent for oddball dancing”.

Inheriting Roles: Implicit in Ballet

2006-02-19T15:00:00.000-06:00

February 19, 2006

A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of performing a role not normally my own. The piece was James Sewell’s “Anagram” and it was with live music in Rochester, MN. Sally Rousse, who normally dances this particular part, did not go on the tour with us. Thus it was that I was given this gift.

When one is taught a role first-hand, there is a quickening. The senses come to attention. The forehead wrinkles as you struggle to imitate and make movements your own. As the inheritor it is important to get your needs met, your questions answered. Depending on the time frame, the priority rises and sets with your need to know.

This particular role begins as a pas de deux and quickly becomes a trio. Both partners have been longtime colleagues and put me at my ease. It is not easy stepping into another dancers original role, especially when that dancer is Sally. I had to very quickly get over the fact that “I’m not Sally” and that the steps will never look the same. They will not have the same ethereal quality with me doing them. And so there is a relinquishing, a giving over, a surrender. But through trusting the steps a leap of faith was made and in the process of execution I found singularity. Though I could not become her I could become more myself.

In terms of surrendering, the same is true from her perspective; she must pass on her knowledge to me. She did, most graciously. Her quiet way yet rapid pace was on the verge of my threshold for retaining. And yet I kept up. We’ve known each other so long I can almost intuit her process. Plus I’ve watched her do this part countless times, as I’ve leaned against the mirrors in our studio or stretched in the wings. It is always a painful thrill as is it so ethereal.

And so it goes. This is an age-old story. From dancer to dancer roles get passed down. If you’re lucky, that transmission takes place live and in-person. Often video is used and is inherently flawed. No, the real, raw deal is to learn form another body. That way you’re privy to the secrets, the thoughts, the dimension. Separate from the choreographer, the originator of a role is the blood and guts, literally, of a part. The body is the instrument and is forever marked by the dancing of a role. And so transmission of a part is intimacy of the highest order and as I said, it is age-old. Through working in this way we as dancers are participating in the timeline that is our history. We are the inheritors; we continue the stories even as we make new ones.

Home Movies - a review

2006-02-06T23:08:00.000-06:00

The five performers of Everett Dance Theatre were earnest and sincere in their presentation of Home Movies, a compilation and accumulation of non-linear personal stories accompanied by visual images and dances/gestures around the themes of family and memory. Despite the non-linear nature of the piece, it was very straightforward and even dated in feeling; it was a little odd to see them in the setting of the Walker Out There series, known for it’s experimental edge.

Nevertheless the piece managed to disarm the audience. As the title implies, each performer brings with them actual photographs and/or film footage of their lives, their childhoods in particular, which we view on giant screens that scroll up and down as needed. They weave their visual stories with narration and movement, at times to touching effect. The piece opens with a dance sequence, intermingled and effortless in it’s ensemble partnering. As their stories unfold, performers group and re-group to serve the story, fading into and out of focus. Transitions were flawless as we were led from film to dance and back.

Sokeo Ros, an endearing performer, offered fine movement juxtaposition as he occasionally broke into breakdance sequences amid the fluidity of much of the other movement. His deadpan style was needed against the sometimes campy and too performative expressions of the others.

There were moments when the piece reminded me of what kids do: put on shows for the grown-ups after dinner. There was a playfulness that was at times cloying but ultimately was effective at representing the themes set forth.

Perhaps the most poetic moment was Aaron Jungels’ (co-founder) spliced together film of sequences of foreign films that his film professor father would show his kids. Aaron’s comments read like subtitles below the images, like a kid’s journal entries: “Bergman was creepy…” To have uttered the words would have ruined the image, it was after all about film.

Every person’s story is a foreign film to the rest of us. We do our best to keep up with the subtitles and have occasional moments of overlapping experiences. This piece seemed to ultimately be about getting one’s story out there and letting it bump up against and intersect with the others. In the end we are left with our memories. Often tragic moments thankfully turn funny (like peeing in school). Sometimes tragedy remains so and etches itself upon our faces. The final images of the piece, ones we’ve seen before, remind us that history repeats itself.

2006-02-01T20:20:00.000-06:00

At the Museum: Thoughts on Villa America

Just overheard: “I just did the New York City Ballet Work-Out. I mean ballet’s just as good as Pilates if not better.”

As I sit with my chocolate croissant and mostly decaf coffee, as I embark on this, my second entry for my blog, this is what I hear. Yes, ballet is better than Pilates. Perhaps not for “work-out” purposes but certainly for artistic ones. I know she meant no harm. I am weirdly flattered that my livelihood came up in a random conversation. As always when I come here, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, I have the sense that I am in the right place at the right time.

Coming here on a Wednesday is a rare treat. Usually I am doing the aforementioned b-word, but we just returned from a tour and have the rest of the day off. I’ve been up since 4:15 AM Mpls. time.

I’ve been itching to see this exhibit, Villa America, a portion of Minneapolis native Myron Kunin’s collection of American paintings and sculptures spanning 1900-1950. I am writing not to critique the exhibit so much as to attempt to articulate how I am inspired by it, by art of other mediums in general. Painting and sculpture always come into play in my work, mostly as points of departure. Many times when I am faced with beginning a new piece I come here to gather inspiration around me like a shawl. It always works; I always do.

Today is no exception though as I write I must admit that I am still processing. There were some luminous works in the show. Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Slightly Open Clam Shell” comes to mind. I don’t tend to go for her work though I admire it for it’s saturated, velvety skill. This little painting however transported me with its opalescent translucence. It equally conveyed positive and negative spaces. Her work tends to do that, masterfully. Do we think about that in dance, that negative spaces can spark and inspire us as much as the “positive” elements? William Forsythe’s improvisation techniques come to mind: use of backspace, space below the floor. Ask the body to respond and it will expand and contract in new ways. Pose a new puzzle to yourself.

The first time I came to the museum was within a month or two of my moving to town in 1994. We had a James Sewell Ballet gig in the Pillsbury Auditorium and one day after rehearsal my friend Christian Burns and I stuck around. I got close up to the paintings, concentrating on the texture. Chris is a painter and you can tell that in his choreography. All of his art is layered, messy, mostly abstract (except that there’s always something recognizable: a human face just decipherable below the surface of color or a human interaction amid chaotic movement, that pulls upon the heartstrings.) It seems as though through his paintings he’s gained a certain comfort in layering, in creating a sketch and covering it up, revealing just a tiny part. He employs this in his choreography and to dancers this is a rough concept. We very quickly become accustomed to movement, married to it. We are pained when it is taken away from us, scrapped. But that process is important, vital. Choreographers are indeed painters, with bodies and time and space. It really is all about the process of trial and error until the opalescent translucence emerges.

In this exhibition too I loved “Two Seated Figures”. It was monochromatic and reminiscent of Picasso in its portrayal of larger-than-life female nudes. They were primitive, wearing mask-like faces, their huge eyes kohl-lined. I was reminded of my female duet “Before Words” that I am in the midst of performing with Sally Rousse under the auspices of James Sewell Ballet. Interconnected and primitive.

There was a magnificent work, someone's mother painted after her death. All angles and severity, he must have hated her. He certainly got back at her. Green and black boldness.

What most directly inspired what I think will be my next choreographic project was a work called "Roberto". It was of a circus performer, 1/2 clown and 1/2 himself. I am stuck in perpetual facination with the world of the performer. Though I am one myself it remains a mystery to me and I hope it always will. It keeps me coming back. It is my safe haven, my cocoon. "Roberto" puts me in mind of my work-in-progress "Papier-Mache Cabaret" that is in the lottery to be in this summer's MN Fringe. Shedding, revealing and hiding behind theatrical devices make up the existing piece; I can't wait to delve deeper.

My afternoon here will feed me for awhile. Until soon, P

Thoughts on ShenWei Dance Arts

2006-01-29T11:56:00.000-06:00

January 29, 2006

The performers entered singly, like statues. The space was undressed, bare, exposed. Wearing strapless, velvet, too-long gowns performers draped themselves against the back wall, off the front of the stage and in the center with regality and slowness. The drone of the music underscored the scene; this was a meditation.

The piece was "Behind Resonance" and indeed it continues to resonate. Amid the established languid pace moments of percussion and momentum were set in relief. Movements were repeated singly and in couples and groups. Motifs were layered just when our eye became accustomed.

Eventually a few women shed their dresses. Their nudity was startling white but soon became an organic part of the décor like curvaceous driftwood. The painfully slow dimming of the lights at the end allowed time for reflection. I knew I had experienced something great.

Intermission was 37 minutes long. They are forgiven.

"The Rite of Spring" was next and I was looking forward to it with great anticipation. Having learned Paul Taylor’s sacrificial virgin solo I am intimate with a portion of the score. Like Taylor, Wei chose to use the four-hand piano version, this one by Fazil Say. The piece began in silence with the performers in two lines upstage to downstage on each side of the “stage space”: a giant canvas designed by Wei interpreting the music with it’s monochromatic and swirling grays, blacks and whites. Whereas in the first piece the entire space was a stage, this piece had limits, boundaries, rules. The floor canvas was the hot spot, the playing field. I’ve seen this device before and also to great effect: Wim Vandekeybus’ "Les Porteuses de Mauvaises Nouvelles" starts with a performer throwing a dart onto the wooden platform that became the field-of-play, foreshadowing the danger that was to come; Myron Johnson’s "Hello Dali" employs a giant sandbox; a small circle of flour in Jim Bovino’s "Soft Sleepers" hosts a birthday party.

In "The Rite of Spring" the performers again entered individually, then the music began. The score has such identifiable roots in western dance; upon hearing the opening strains Nijinsky is channeled. He is promptly forgotten as Wei abstractly sets out his own, singular, physical response. Like the first piece movements are established and passed among the performers. Yet here individuals have exclusive rights to material serving to set them apart from the fold; everyone plays the sacrificial virgin. Despite the program notes telling me that this was pure abstraction, the story the score tells is there whether Wei directly acknowledges it or not.

The couple in front of me left mid-piece, first him and then her a few minutes later. What was she waiting for, an explanation? Others walked out as well and I smiled to myself, confirming once again that I was seeing something great.

Wei is a masterful and brave choreographer. He allows images to linger, to have a life and duration of their own. This is where I see his eastern influence most. His is a hybrid of cultures, aesthetics and mediums. His company of performers is up to the task and top-notch. It was a privilege to experience them. I ran out as soon as the piece ended though I was sure to applaud as the curtain lowered. Once I made it down to the ground floor, however, I paused to peek in. The artists were stretched across the stage receiving their due: a well-deserved and long applause. I made my way out again, not wanting to see anyone I knew, wanting instead to let the images continue to resonate as I walked out and into the rain.

Barefootblogger: thoughts on dance

Cog

Weird Food

Losing (Almost) Everything and Other Gifts that Keep on Giving

Exercise

Reflecting: Floes, Floss and Fullness

Yes Again

Engagement

Two Days Out

Verdi's "Aida", Small and with a Drummer

Merce

Weather Report

Touching Paul

Demons

Student

No Elephant

What Counts

Open

Commune

Pin

Notes from the Joyce

Notes from the Joyce

Notes from the Joyce

Notes from the Joyce

Notes from the Joyce

Opening Night

O'er the Ramparts

The Elephant in the Room

Company

Fly Spring

After Beauty

What Lingers (as seen on the Walker Art Center blog)

My Naive Impressions of the Forsythe Method (as seen on the Walker Art Center blog)

Anonymous

Near Miss

It Makes Me Happy

Red Envelope

The Function of the Devil

Parade of Names - A Diary of New Orleans

Parallel

Chair Bones

like e.e.cummings

These Two Hands are Enough

Ties that Bind

At This Dark Hour

Burn

To Be Downstage Left

In My Attempt

Poem

Bridging the Gap

Stop Time Blind

Exquisite Pain

Dusk

Carrots

Fall

New Process

My Left Calf

Circles

Heart

Evolution

Connections

Words

"Glorious Noise" and the Quest for the Holy Grail

Whispering in the Dark

Brave New Torch Bearers

Home Too

I Thought This Was Over

I Am Petrouchka

Texture

Spring Season

Striving Toward an Easy Virtuosity

Home

My Beautiful Spine

Editing while Maintaining (and Revealing) the Soul of a Piece

Grandpa

"Serenade" and a Solo

Inheriting Roles: Implicit in Ballet

Home Movies - a review

Thoughts on ShenWei Dance Arts