oh those pauses in the process...

So we close today. Today is performance # 4 of 4. A pause in the process. A conclusion of sorts. I hate endings. I have set up my life to just always be moving on so I never have to deal with endings.

Appropriately enough, as usual I dash out of town tomorrow, avoiding "good-byes" as it were.

I always avoid endings, closings, good-byes......

Being 57 combined with endings gets scarier and scarier as I feel closer and closer to the end of my life (though I think I still have a ways to go).

So this show, on its massive, massive scale - in numbers of people on stage, numbers of collaborators, production values, size of audiences, amount of singular focus, props, costumes, lights.... now draws to its close and makes me wonder if I will ever take on a performance at this scale ever again. "Never say never" I remind myself.... but still...

Now I move onto new phases of the work - because it still doesn't feel concluded yet. I want to try and write it for the page.
Whether to be read, to be an interactive experience that combines reading with doing, to be offered as a performance script for others to undertake.... those are all intriguing questions.

Things I want to hold onto:
- the performance ensemble we have created
- collaborating with Chip
- a way of creating a new theatrical genre, as Rupert called it
- being back into my dancing body with confidence

No offense, but

"with the tools that make people’s eyes bleed" that is how a dear colleague of mine has advertised a choreographic mentoring project. personally, I don't want to make anyone's eyes bleed, or any other body part. what do I want to do? is connect people to their own humanity. and then maybe, we could stop making others bleed......as yet another suicide bomb goes off in the middle east, as yet another young person dies in a gang shooting in the USA, as yet another uninsured person bleeds to death because they can't afford healthcare, as yet.... hasn't enough blood been spilled in the history of the human race? isn't it time to evolve already?

19 days and counting

it has moved off the page. it is in the bodies - my body, chip's body and the bodies of all the cast. 31 plus and counting. sometimes if fits, sometimes it is elusive. we each struggle to hold onto what worked so well yesterday, and slips away today. the joy on faces when it returns. or when it arrives, finally, for the first time. i love making shows... i hate making shows. its the tightrope walk of live performance. so much easier to capture on film/video. edit out the ugly. hold onto blips of nearer-to-perfection. i celebrate my cast - daring to climb onto the tightrope. i celebrate my cast who is doing this for one reason - the love of doing it. i am so honored and humbled in their presence....... and that they try harder, and again, again each time i say: ummmmm I don't think so...... ummmmm not there yet....... ummmm let's try again........