Sixty is growing. We’ve now performed The Long Haul and Heatwave several times. At our last showing at the 92nd Street Y on Nov 30, Vicky Shick and I performed a revised version of Reading Aloud, a trio for the two of us and a book. Audience feedback from these showings has been very helpful. After showing Reading Aloud for the first time in October, I knew it needed work. After showing a revised version at the Y, I felt I was on the right track.
This section is based on a wonderful story I received from Carol Mullins about her 20th birthday. She talked her mother into letting her have the family car and drove with her best friend from Virginia, where they lived, to North Carolina. They went to Thomas Wolfe’s grave, sat beside it and read aloud to each other from Look Homeward Angel. I found it such a touching and evocative image. I love the youthful fervor that runs through that book, as well as through Carol’s story. It’s a pleasure for me to do this section with Vicky, a friend of many years. Though we don’t actually read aloud from the book, in this little dance, the book connects us.
We also showed Sixty Beginnings for the first time. Vicky and Deborah Glaser, another old dance friend, gave me a great challenge: make a dance with 60 beginnings. There are so many ways to think about this. What is a beginning anyway? And when does a beginning end? We experimented with lots of ideas in the studio and wound up with a dance of at least 60 beginnings.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with playwright/composer Ellen Maddow of Talking Band fame several times. For Sixty, Ellen gave me one of the songs on her Betty and the Blenders album that she did in the eighties. In Red Bikini, she sings a list of things she’s thinking – things she wants, wonders about, fears. As I listened to it I thought, oh – that’s the inside of Ellen’s head. Funny, it sounds just like mine! This section is a rush of movement for all five dancers and me. Working on it reminded me why, in recent years, I’ve danced less in my own work. It’s so hard to be in it, see it, and shape it. It’s hard for me to believe that when I first started making dances, I was always in everything. From this vantage point, I don’t know how I did that.
A few ideas are waiting in the wings – a dance based on Jewish music from the 1600s, a dream about the Jerusalem sky, and a complex anagram that evolves into a short story. The structure of the anagram interests me. How can we use it to make a dance? I’m also working on a suggestion to make a set of “limb quartets,” which turns out to be a quartet of quartets: four dancers onstage, each dancer performing a solo “quartet” with their four limbs.
We’ll be doing another showing at the Y on Feb 29. I hope you can join us!
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