Septet, 1964-- Merce Cunningham coursed into his 45th year as I settled into my 12th. 31 years later he articulates his 76th by quietly stating, I like to make steps. Even when walking I notice the periods dropping to ground. One foot remains briefly still while the other is pushed forward by either momentum or will. & Nijinsky some years prior: I merely leap & pause.
While growing up in Camaret-sur-Mer, in the nearest home to that of my family, lived a woman who endured to the suspected age of 112 years old. (It was never necessary to explore the reality of her exact years, as truth rests best outside of accuracy.) She maintained an intimacy of face despite the years. Every ten a new wrinkle would appear.
The dead were pushing this.
I have but 2 wishes & a cache of insignificance. Dance is an art in space & time. The object of the dancer is to obliterate that. Merce, I didn't understand, then.
For several thousand years the earth stood still in a state of silence. Copernicus revised the silence set unflinching by Ptolemy-- Galileo saw all as only pause in time and set the universe stepping. He proclaimed the earth leaping...in circles. And yet, it moves.
The best thing is to be able to continue. A dialogue that only follows in fragment. A woman thrust to light from citrus & razor wire. A foot perfect in place. Two feet as even keel.
Our time is as loving as a thought left. If I knew one as certain, the Earth might move.
He is animalistic...spotlighting pedestrian & mundane movements of day/life...stripping & de-sexing the often-times sexed-up, windward leaning, & dramatic big-moon choreography of Diaghilev who believed that art is a process that results in finality.
Bullocks.
As a rejection of George Balanchine, in which there is nothing Modern. 1953. Black Mountain. Charles Olsen. The energy transfer from connection to production to apprehension by audience. Merce: Dance doesn't follow a story line.
My sister/ my sister/
my new sisters:
but only one
rises in the horizon
red like fire
fierce for flame
The one is pulled by orange peels, and more awake than the hundred others.
It is her predicament to feel. & to do this alone for a while.
& feel & feel & feels.
Alone, an unlikely keel supporting the whole. A scaffold stretching out electric across grey water.
as a darkness now/ I could have destroy me/ the dictionaries of the world/ & still not know how--
We both found a way to move impossible for our selves/ crying in a Volvo/ we chose to speak/ inexplicable.
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