On Her Own Two Feet

For a long time, a forming dance feels like a collection of bits or textures that you can imagine coalesced in your head. Holding the imaginary dance is delicate - its shape might change if it has one at all. It might reveal itself to be a different creature than what initially appeared. Then there's the moment when the dance begins to feel like something you can better hold onto, with weight and its own personality, like your child on her own two feet who, though of you, has her own mind and is full of surprises. You wonder how she issued from you. You delight in conversation.

With "Red Thread," as soon as ideas began to be "sections," the way they were constructed - with lots layering, shifting of scale and abrupt transitions - was new for me. With three mothers, the piece's shape is unlike shapes I've had a hand in making before. Choppier, less predictable, but with resonances. By design, something you see early on echoes in another form. Like similar colors sprinkled through a quilt.

As of the showing in Philly, the six-woman version of "Red Thread" is tottering around, not steady on her feet just yet, but with strong bones poised for growth. She's asking for definition, for clarity, and for us to get deeper into what each of her parts are.

We've been pondering the question of durations. Vicky doesn't want to bore the watcher and likes having tastes, or concise episodes, then cutting away into something else. She often suggests interruptions. I keep thinking about how Lucy Guerin in "Corridor" has this "sick dance" duet where the actions are all gestures of physical discomfort with accompanying groans, moans and curses. As soon as you get what's happening, it's highly amusing. It sputters after not too long, but then starts back up with more outrageous behaviors. When it restarts a second time, you're totally hooked - its the merciless boring down into this material that makes it worth putting on tour all the way from Australia. These two poles, Vick's and Lucy's, are most like both/and rather than either/or.

The process of "Red Thread' being long distance and over a long time frame means that each of us will be "marinating" the dance for a few months before the final finish. I feel the ache now that you have in a long distance relationship - that longing to be with the person. In this case, absence is a good thing though. I trust that the time between putting it all together (December) and its consummating final work intensive and premiere (March) will bring the right view of what it is and wants to be.

The Birth

[This photo is of Bryn Mawr College's newly renovated Goodhart Hall where we rehearsed.]

As of yesterday, “Red Thread” has a whole fleshed-out form! Following the October work in New York, our strategy has been to take the 35-minute trio made for me, Eva, and Vicky and teach/transpose/re-interpret it in a new version for all six of us. Adding Michele, Meg and Gabi into the mix has had us looking at particular sections and thinking ‘no way’ for any kind of straight repeat. Instead some parts are represented with one fleeting image or layered now with something else or omitted altogether. A few are run with the older dancers doing the original and the younger ones having interconnected newly-built parts. The overall plan – to make a new dance out of our trio, like fashioning a second quilt with the same materials and basic pattern as the first- has held.

The three younger dancers, dubbed MGM, bring freshness. Their presence feels lighter, more playful. They have been game to try anything and we even asked them to keep in a little tossing-movement moment that arose when they were goofing around.

We asked Meg if she would be willing to throw in some scraps from her piece “Cookie” and there’s a great floor phrase of hers now. Her beginning for “Cookie” – having dancers appear and disappear from behind doors, partitions, etc. - is something we played with and it morphed into a “Line Up” homage. Just a simple way of introducing the new dancers within the piece. A fresh start.

In yesterday’s first run of the whole thing, Eva’s friends Susan and George watched and didn’t recognize the three solos that Eva, Vicky and I do as having been taught to the younger dancers. That’s great! Maybe it’s because they’re not ‘dance people’ and aren’t oriented to looking at movement so specifically. But maybe the energy and quality with which the material is done has individualized them enough now that they read as different. That’s a good thing. Clones are definitely not the idea.

Both George and Susan spoke about the essentialness of having each moment be alive, not as anything that could have been taken from another context, or from history. Risk, precariousness, and the emotional edge in relationships that aren’t stable or easy are things George wanted to see us move toward.

We drove over to show Vick and Eva the Performance Garage. They love it (with good reason) and we spoke about how the scale is perfect, how it’s both intimate and formal, and will focus the eye on the intricacies of the piece.

To cap off the day we watched the videotape of rehearsal and got into a heated debate about whether to make cuts in order not to have it be too draggy or long. The consensus is that in March we will trim any possible fat but for now we’ll just tighten transitions and feel what it is we’ve got: this newborn dance.

Philadelphia - December

Tuesday, December 8, 2009
This past week or more, I’ve been going to sleep and waking, and returning many times a day, to Red Thread. Going over the piece in my mind, running my material, trying to tease out the patterns, both in body and space, searching for the essences in what we’re doing. A few days ago, when the DVD of the NY showing arrived, and I watched it, I began to consider what it is that we’re doing in this piece. Yes, there’s some dancing, but not a lot; yes, there are some intriguing images, but how compelling are they? In the end I decided that what this piece is about, that doesn’t really show on a video, is relationship, our relationship, and the elusive ingredient that livens performance when it’s present, and adds the necessary juice to even simple material, but that’s so difficult to capture with a still camera that’s recording merely for memory.



We began today by looking at the piece as we had left it in NY, our basic framework, trying to feel out which sections might accept all of us, 3 + 3, and which would work with which of the three other dancers we’ll be introducing during this 2 week work period – a conceptual exercise, but useful in helping us see how to structure our rehearsals most effectively. It was a relief to move after lunch, and begin to remember the piece physically. Once again, we were surprised by how quickly the material returns, even though none of us had spent much time with it during the interim – life, with all its myriad complexities, taking precedence over our intentions to work with it daily, Lisa doing most of the simmering in her twice weekly rehearsals with Meg. It feels good to be back in the studio with these women. We have grown even closer through this process of making, familiarity and ease with each other, knowing how to draw out the most constructive ideas, when to give support, how to challenge. We have a lot of work ahead of us, not just in making structural decisions, but also design choices. It’s a touch overwhelming, but stimulating and exciting as well.




Wednesday, December 9
Excitement builds. We spend the morning continuing to bring the piece back for ourselves. We clean the yarn section, the ‘kitchen duet’, and watch Lisa’s solo. Feelings of satisfaction at being back with, and in, the material, as well as questions, fill the air. We brainstorm over lunch about what we want to tackle first with the other dancers.

In the afternoon they arrive. Introductions over, we begin with the walking phrases. They learn fast. That, after all, is one of the skills young dancers have. Useful, when we have only these few days to both teach and develop material. There’s some jostling with too many ideas from too many choreographers, but Lisa reminds us that this is part of our process, that it took time for the three of us to learn how to work with it, but as rehearsal continues, when the new builds are introduced into our walking pattern, we’re all exhilarated by the complexity that happens in space, and with material and relationships. We end the afternoon teaching our solos – Lisa to Gabi, Vicky to Meg, and me to Michelle. Thrilling to see the young dancers embrace our material so fully, with so much individuality and commitment.

Lisa, Vicky and I are also thinking about costumes, colors, props. We find a color palette we like in the book ‘Earth from Above’, jumping off of Mimi Gross’ suggestion of earth and colorful. Lisa and Vicky are enthusiastic about making clothing decisions, Lisa sketches ideas, we speak about what we can buy or make. Time seems short again. There’s so much to do. During dinner, a communal chopping and cooking event, Lisa’s eyes begin to close and I realize she’s dozing while I’m telling her a particularly interesting story. Yes, we’re tired, but as we comment before heading off to bed, there’s nothing we enjoy more than being in the studio, in process, playing, exploring, making creative decisions. This is where we are in our element. Delicious.