As I continued to sort through the responses to my request for ideas on which to base a dance, I was led to Salamone Rossi, a prolific Italian composer, by Laurie Uprichard and Phil Sandstrom. They suggested I make a dance to Jewish music from the 1600s. Rossi’s music is gorgeous and, like other early music, has a tricky rhythmic structure that isn’t apparent until you try counting it or moving to it. We started with the movement of bending and bowing. What’s in a bow? What are you saying when you bow to another person? Four dancers face each other in a square to begin. I imagine this growing into a set of three or four squares, with twelve or sixteen dancers performing this section.
Scott Johnson, who composed the score for Resist/Surrender, sent me a detailed description of a solo he envisioned for me. He said it came to him after seeing a Meredith Monk performance, which made him think about the span of a dancer’s life. He imagined me seated with my upper body reclining and only my four limbs moving. I explored this with the dancers and it evolved into an idea we call Limb Quartets that will appear in the piece three times. The first time it appears, all the dancers are seated on chairs facing the audience. They set each other’s limbs moving in a complicated version of the kids’ game of patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. It is gripping to watch each dancer struggle to keep his or her four limbs moving completely differently. It takes enormous concentration. Inevitably each one starts to laugh, then finds the focus again. The dancers look so vulnerable. This section will return in a slightly different way as a duet and as a solo. Elise said she sees it as a comment on choreography which, though often collaborative, is ultimately not democratic.
Last summer when we were working in upstate New York I showed the dancers a videotape I had recently found o f Plain Crossing, a piece I made in 1977. It was danced by four women, including me, at Trisha Brown’s loft on Broadway. The next year we did at Washington Square Church (which has been turned into condos). Then we did a version of it in the Sculpture Garden of MOMA. As I watched the video, my muscles remembered how certain movements felt. The dancers loved it and said they wanted it to be the idea they contributed to Sixty. They’ve learned a section from the video. So here I am, thirty years later, and I’m getting to clean up a piece I made as a much younger person. How often do we wish for that chance in other aspects of our lives! I like watching six foot tall Luke do my part (I’ve always wished I was a few inches taller).
I’m about to start working on a duet for Paul and Eun Jung. I look forward to telling you more about it soon.
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