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.