There is something about seeing dance live that is, and I know I use this word more often than I probably should, but MAGIC!!!!!! I Want To Read About That Feeling! I want to know what a dance does to YOU. The living, breathing you who will go home and brush your teeth and then wake up the next morning and do it again. The you who has some nervous twitch that only your closest companions notice. The you that misses someone and has dreams that they let die and longs to own a boat or something. Do you lean forward in your seat to try to become it? Where do you feel the dance in your body? What does it do to the air around you? How does the movement make you long for something? Does your mind ever trail off mid-phrase and where does it go and how do you re-enter? 

The people who found the very beach I was on and decided to settle there with their horses but then they left and the horses stayed and now there are horses who know how to survive a hurricane but a horse shouldn’t even know about a hurricane. Or maybe it should. What do I know about what a horse should or shouldn’t know? I feel so small in here. Small in a good way. Small like I feel in New York City or under a really big tree that was here before me and will be here after me. Small like I feel on a swing in the middle of the night surrounded by the essence of what once was. A smallness that sort of folds in on itself and transforms into this desire to be bigger. To dream bigger. To know bigger. To love bigger.

Sometimes I feel like a poser. My favorite part of any dance I have ever seen is when a fly flutters across the stage and I remember that I am a human with bones and cheese rotting in my fridge. I’ve just witnessed an incredible feat of humanity, “the ineffable magic of a pulsating, sweaty body immersed in a live ritual in front of our eyes,” and all I can think about is that fly (Guillermo Gomez-Pena).

it feels a bit like my whole life is wrapped in this translucent sheath of sadness. a glimmer of grief in all that i do. the joy still peaks through. you can see it’s shape and the colors are clear. but it’s distorted. blurry. it’s tainted by what never was and will never be. there’s a deep loneliness with each shiny new thing. longing shrouds. sometimes the shadow feels bigger than the thing itself and other times it’s so cloudy i can’t see the shadow at all or maybe it’s all shadow. actually, when the sun shines the brightest the shadow is the loudest. most defined. that’s how shadows work.

For 12 minutes I let people see the ugliest parts of myself, my deepest desires and biggest fears, the emotional fiber of a complex being live right in front of your eyes.

The grief that is typically portrayed in media is the big dramatic moments, but it is really much more mundane than that. Doing the dishes and remembering that moment you shared, or walking into a coffee shop and randomly smelling her perfume, or seeing someone that you swear could be her. It never goes away. It just sort of gets sewn into your life in subtle ways that you learn to live with and even sometimes love because it is the only way they continue to live on. 

This image of Chiao-Ping’s mother literally being projected onto her body sets the tone for the work to come. It brings up a question I find myself grappling with often – what parts of my mother are projected onto me? This specific image of Li Chiao-Ping, gently and tactfully expanding the sheet, has me reckoning with how much of this projection of my mother is involuntary versus an active choice to let her live on through me.

remember when i mentioned that the audience itself would become as much a part of the effort? well, around this point is when i noticed this layer to the work. in front of me, a child lays in her mothers lap and i am reminded of the effort of motherhood. at the top of the hill, a girl is attempting tightrope. as she leaves the rope, i think of the effort it takes to walk away. my back hurts from being in a seated position and my ass is soggy from the wet grass below it. i can’t help but ponder on all the effort it took for me to be here, now. in a new state with a new job navigating the horrible highway systems of north carolina that led me to this very show. to my right, a boy is playing cards.