Surprise, Surprise

The first surprise is that the Red Thread machine has been oiled and gotten moving so that an idea, thrown into the middle of it, gets torn up and mixed around and comes out very differently than it began. This piece does not feel like my piece or Eva’s piece or Vicky’s, but instead the product of a hybrid sensibility. And that happens while deferring to each other, giving space for one person’s idea and then another’s to get fleshed out fully. Not consensus, but evolution through a series of radical propositions. Darwinian.

Another surprise – we made a form encompassing all our materials in our first NY week that seems OK. We’d been wanting to get to this place and it happened without struggle. And having Vick’s husband Alan come and reflect back gave more certainty that the track we’re on is the one we mean to be on. He was uncomfortable with the parts that make us uncomfortable, appreciated things we can’t see being inside it. His comments also sparked a structural idea that may prove to be the key to the whole thing once we bring in our 3 younger dancers (more on that later).

Red Thread is not like anything I’ve made. It’s more pedestrian, more choppy, more all over the place, and more spare. But the idea of patchwork – of placing one color next to another with no apology for contrast or wild juxtaposition - implies exactly the kind of freedom we are taking. And, also as with patchwork, it’s repetition that makes a pattern emerge.