Hi my loves! (WARNING: Ridiculously long email with sappy ending below. Read at your own risk!)
Wow, you wouldn't believe how much I miss you guys! I am in NYC surrounded by a few friends (and a some non-friends) and would give anything to sit over tea with you all and talk about life, dance, spirit, politics, whatever...
Anyway, though I'm a day late and a dollar short, I thought I'd share Margaret's request for LOH process memories with everyone.
1. I remember we began by writing in journals/notebooks about something...sorry I don't remember the prompt for that writing...
2. I remember writing our daily processes on the walls on huge sheets of brown paper. More specifically, I remember the topics, "How do I know I exist?", "How do I heal?"
3. I remember the Bill T. Jones-inspired "floating the tongue" exercises where we would say what our bodies were doing as we did it; and that developed into not just say what we were doing, but saying that we were what we were doing (i.e. I AM the arm that is swinging, I AM the ribs that are shaking..."); and that moved into the "I am the dust. I am rising from the dust..." poem.
4. I remember the awesomely violent, improvised duet between Margaret and Cara. The violence that was most notable to me in that improvisation was not in the "violent movement" itself, but in the hostile ways you acknowledged/didn't acknowledge each other's presence.
5. I remember Angie and I playing with images of violent postures that we'd seen/been exposed to. One was one of us lying on the ground with the other person twisting the 1st person's arm behind their back (police-style) and stepping on their back to keep them down. We also did an exercise where there was a standing person and a floor person, and the standing person had to whatever it took to ensure that the floor person would not get up to standing- the aim was to keep them down. (Was the kicking born out of this day? I can't remember) That was a hard day of rehearsal for Angie and me because we had to inflict violence on one another, something so out of character for us both. But check out how that ending duet turned out!
6. I remember Cara and I making an entire duet based on flying (I think), that "Slow Motion" song, and something else I can't remember. We fragmented the song, translated portions into French, and used it as text to our duet. (Man, I wish we'd videoed that!)
7. At a point, I remember you, Margaret, deciding that the piece was going to be a series of vignettes. We were at Silverspace and were split up into our respective trios, duets, or solos. Emily read a graphic account of an African woman's rape and torture during wartime in a cheery voice as if it were a bedtime story. I read text that you wrote involving an angry, enslaved woman, shrapnel, and the devil's abacus.
8. I remember lots of storytelling. This process made me realize how much I love storytelling. We told stories and listened (the bird story, the stories of personal experiences with violence; me hitting the girl on the school bus, Cara witnessing the fight b/t ppl in her town; Angie watching the crack-lady and the man inch their way down the street, yelling...) and stories we told all at the same time (again, at Silverspace, we were all in a circle and everyone simultaneously contributed things that were emotionally difficult- can't remember the exact prompt for this one either- and a lot of us ended up in tears)
9. I remember the floating, hand-slapping game we did in partners in which the loser had to melt to the ground and get kicked about before starting over.
10. The best memory was balancing the heaviness of the content of the piece with lots and lots of laughter and lovingness toward one another throughout the entire process.
Congrats if you made it this far, aaallll the way down memory lane! Margaret, hope this enhances your manifesto writing. Also- not related- I'll be in town for a quick moment this weekend (Friday-Sunday) for my sister's graduation from Columia, so holla!
So much love,
Keisha
Margaret Morris
- Hide quoted text -
Hello my angels,
Margaret here. I'm stepping into a new place in my perceptions and interests about dance and preparing to write a new manifesto and overhaul my website.
I need your memories. From your experiences of the Laying of Hands process, I would deeply appreciate if you could send me little notes about what tidbits of things we did were particularly memorable (particularly things that did not appear in the final work). I'm not asking you to rack your brains, just to share the thing that float naturally to the surface in response to this request.
A couple things that surface for me are:
1 accessing the physiology of laughter and crying through breath explorations
2 playing in the shifts between catching and being caught with a partner in one area/moving through space
Thanks and love,
Margaret
PS Angie, how did the concert go? I wanted to go but had a family emergency that thew off my weekend plans.
