1
Mar, 2011
14
Feb, 2011
Investigating Mysteries
I love mysteries. I love mystery novels and movies, and mysterious stories and myths. I love when spiritual teachers refer to the divine as the "Great Mystery." More and more these days I'm seeing my performance work as a series of mysteries I'm immersed in. Each new performance project at times seems like something I've conjured up with my collaborators, and at other times like something much bigger and mysterious that we are entering into. I much prefer the latter
14
Feb, 2011
Letting go of gumbo..
For many years on my birthday, my mother would make her seafood gumbo. It was one of the few times I would ask her to make this dish and I always liked to share this experience with family and friends because my mother’s gumbo is an experience. It is thick, messy, full of crabs legs, shrimps, oysters and okra. We used to spread newspaper on the table, wear bibs and used nut crackers to crack the crab, the sound of
13
Feb, 2011
2nd Work in Progress Showing
I was reminded yesterday of how helpful work in progress showings are. I often forget that this is an experimental form we're working in, and that experimental forms need actual experiments. While performances are experiments, they are high-pressure ones, and I learn as much, if not more from showings along the way. Here's some excerpts from ours yesterday:
13
Feb, 2011
This One’s For Friendship
One of the things that is shifting in me in response to the recent death of my friend Sharon Mussen is a re-prioritizing of friendship. I had a professor in grad school tell me once that I should never direct my friends in my projects--that the roles become too confusing. Even though I respect this professor very much, that advice somehow confirmed for me how much I operate from exactly the opposite view. I love creating experimental performance precisely because
12
Feb, 2011
Conditioning
I'm humbled to see how deep so much of my conditioning runs. I've been learning about and experimenting with inclusive dance techniques for almost a decade now. I'm continually looking for ways to make the ways I perform, think about, create and teach dance/theater inclusive of people with diverse mobilities. And still my conditioning asserts itself over and over. I fall back on how I learned to dance. Sometimes this is wonderful and provides a storehouse of movement approaches and
12
Feb, 2011
Birthing Pains
I see the creation of each art work as a kind of birth. There's both great connection and great pain in this process, and I often forget that the magnitude of how connecting a piece is directly relates to how painful its birth can be. Last week we tried out a structure for performing a lot of the most salient material we've been developing in our Friend project. It's a difficult feat to imagine how to collage together all the
12
Feb, 2011
Mid Way
I feel half gay. Not sexually that is... I'm not bisexual or sexually confused. I'm clearly hot for men. I just feel culturally half gay. Like somehow I've inherited or learned only a part of the culture, but not actually enough to pass a thorough inspection. If I was to try to board a plane to return to Gay Land, customs would have a field day before letting me pass through. Of course, I don't really feel half straight either.
8
Feb, 2011
8
Feb, 2011
Ode to my Father and my brother…
I’m cooking as fast as I can! A week and a half ago, I found myself cooking for one food party after another and no sooner than I finish washing my trusty pot that I cook my stews in does Julie Phelps and Keith Hennessey call me and ask me if I can come cook for 150 people at the amazing marathon performance they produce at Dance Mission called, Too Much! What do I say? Hell yeah! I had a
27
Jan, 2011
Internship Week 1: Committed Souls
1/11/11, a lucky numerical day I believe to start something new. I got off the BART train in high heels freezing my tiny self and toes off, noting that I never want to wear these specific heels again to the city. I had coffee breathe and stopped by Walgreens to get some gum, I also eagerly needed to use the bathroom and wasn't familiar with the city enough to find one. As I walked down 9th street, I imagined myself arriving
18
Jan, 2011
Injury as Teacher
I'm often able to tell other people when they are injured how much every injury can be a teacher. When it's not me having to hold back from moving with physical abandon, I see the benefit of learning about our limitations and our vulnerability through our injuries. When I have an injury, my vision is a lot murkier and I have to wade through a lot of resistance before I come to some kind of acceptance of what happened and