I felt excited and a little nervous coming back to Sixty after some time away to work on another project – like seeing someone you care about after a separation. Will they look different to you? Will you still like them? Whatever self-doubt was lurking peaked at that moment before I revisited Sixty.
One of the good things that happens with time away is that things have a chance to ripen. Though the dancers had not been working on Sixty, their bodies were absorbing the material. When we returned to it, they seemed more rooted in the piece. This allowed us to move on to another level of work – creating a whole out of the parts, and refining the movement and the physical and emotional intention of the piece.
Sixty was inspired by my sixtieth birthday. I brought many other people into the process of creating it with the intention of making Sixty about something bigger than myself. I think I have succeeded in doing that. Now I wonder how people will respond to the work that has emerged, which is not in any literal way about aging or being sixty. The piece is made up of images that overlap and repeat in different contexts, mirroring the way our experiences mix and overlap in our minds as we get older and have a longer perspective.
Clint Ramos, set and costume designer, and I are in that wonderful, precarious-feeling place where we heap too many ideas on the table then figure out which to toss and which to keep. I always come back to thinking less is more. It is sometimes hard to make sure that you don’t stay wedded to ideas that really need to go.
Please join us for the premiere of Sixty at Danspace Project November 13-15 and 20-22, 8:30pm, 131 E 10th Street.
