Monthly Archives: August 2006
I almost forgot.
Tonight Black Label Movement performed its inaugural show at the Southern theatre. We recieved a standing ovation as soon as the lights came up for the bow. My reflection for the night is this:
It has been so long since I have come away from a concert, or any kind of performance, feeling that we’ve moved to new ground, that some people will effectively view the world differently because of what we offered tonight. The atistic integrity and the humanity of this work has really allowed me to put my soul into it. I don’t feel like I’m “putting on” anything. I feel like, as dancers, what we added as human being was just as important as the movement, if not more. I’m reminded why I am a dancer. The relationships(!!!) between us, the company, and us, the living, breathing bodies that are filling the theatre. There is a unity of purpose that is so reflective of what I think heaven will be like.
It is so wonderful to be involved with something I really believe in and, on top of that, knowing that it is effecting the greater world to some extent. This is no replacement for getting out and down in the dirt and scum and loving people who really need it, but I think we are shaking things up and maybe people will look around and see, and breathe. Isn’t that what Art is for?
Black Label Movement
Our first company show opens this Thursday! Send your prayers! I feel like we will blast people away! I’m excited! Today our preview article came out in the Star Tribune! It had a cool picture of me and another dancer in the paper and a great article! The article is available on-line!
It has been an exciting year in my dancing career!
So exciting, in fact, that I can’t seem to write in anything but exclamations!
This is why I love choreography:
Two Bee, or Knot Too “B”
I had meant for this poem to be an allegory originally, but as I began writing it I realized I was bored with allegory. So I tried to make it more of a wash of imagery. I tried to relate emotions I wanted understood with the images rather than have specific meanings for everything I wrote. Unfortunately, it still turned out to be something of an allegory, but it’s different from the one’s I’ve done in the past. I don’t really want it to be interpreted as much as I’d like it to be rolled around in the mouth like a caramel. Does it strike up any emotions? It does for me, but that’s because I wrote it. I think the things that have specific meanings are obvious, but there is stuff in there that was put in to bring out the tones that the metaphors rest in. I don’t know. I’m trying something new.
I saw a fire today from the highway
and the smoke coming from it looked like a seahorse.
I thought it was a dragon at first,
but it was definitely a seahorse.
It just needed a minute to develop
and make me believe.
I couldnt tell where the fire
was coming from, but I hoped
it was a good fire and not the kind
that starts in your stove
and ends up killing your pets.
Or the kind that eats you while you sleep.
I took the exit that seemed like it would
get me closest to the street the fire was on.
I could smell it then. When the wind was right.
Was I inhaling burnt bits of rug or the dust
from a charred and neglected guinea pig?
I ended up following a fire truck.
I arrived late to the show.
People perimetered the glowing building,
some on rooftops, some on an adjacent hill.
Rivers of water poured from the building
that seemed to fill its mouth, then let it drain
out the corners like a hemorrhage .
It was a family-owned plant nursery.
The roof was gone and from on the hill
I could see a chair in the middle of a room.
It wasnt getting burned even though the fire
danced at least two stories above it.
I watched it vibrate and hum in the flames.
I stared at it for twenty minutes.
It didnt change and nobody else
seemed to notice the chair at all.
I blinked. I changed my angle.
I did a pirouette and a somersault.
It waited there cooly still.
I came up to the building and firemen
were yelling at me to go away.
They didnt expect it when I walked inside.
I didnt burn. I just felt warm everywhere.
I walked to the center of the room
to where the chair was and I sat in it.
I drew my legs up and tilted my head back.
I could see the night through the tunnel of fire.
I could see Virgo with her wheat.
The chair creaked and I looked down.
It was so bright I could barely make out
the fire that had caught on my shirtsleeve.
I felt a thousand needles diving into my skin.
I stood to leave when a boiling gust
knocked me over and disintegrated the chair.
Lying on my side, I wondered at how long
itd take for my fingernails to melt.
A man dressed in silver saved me.
People crowded around me so I
got up and walked back to my car.
I wanted to drive with the windows open.
I wanted to go and sit back in that chair.
It never existed, only the glowing red
I could still see in my mirror.
I came to the highway,
flicked on my blinker.
Addiction and Missing
Missing somebody is really a form of addiction, isn’t it. I know this is not a new idea, but I was thinking about it today. That person whom you miss had occupied a place in your brain that is accociated with good and pleasant things and when you don’t get your “fix” from that person you go through withdrawl. There is more to it than than that, but there has to be something chemically invloved because missing is a full-bodied experience. I’ve never trully been addicted to anything, but I have gone through enough human withdrawl that I think there has to be some relation between missing your person and emptying your stash. Look at how people turn to drugs when they are trying to cope with a missing person! We humans don’t like to have empty spots. There’s something programmed in us to desire to be filled. It’s like we’ve all suffered from some kind of deprivation when we were younger.
Are Vegetarians Taking It Too Far?
(reprinted by permission from the Monday, July 31st edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press)
Are Vegetarians Taking It Too Far?
Yesterday, area man, Edward Oroyan, 28, was assualted at his local church. He was given a bag of fresh garden cucumbers from a fellow patron. Upon leaving the church he noted a shifty looking elderly woman, Mary Jane Slaiku, 84, eyeing his cucumbers. Oroyan recalls, “I didn’t think anything of it. Old ladies always look at me funny.”
Oroyan was hit from behind repeatedly by Slaiku’s rattan walking stick. Disoriented, Oroyan tripped over a toddler and loosed his cucumbers. The toddler and Oroyan suffered minor injuries while Slaiku snatched the bag of vegetables. Attempting to escape, several patrons, including the pastor of the church, tackled Slaiku and detained her while authorities were notified.
Pastor Ken Lewis of Trinity Baptist Church recalled, “She fought like donkey! I kept having visions of Jacob wrestling with an angel. But this woman was no angel…”
Slaiku was arrested and brought to the patrol car incomprehensible and foaming at the mouth. When questioned as to what were her motives, Slaiku lunged for a nearby patch of azaleas growing outside the church. Police acted quickly while the onlooking congregation covered their fresh produce. The purloined pickels were returned to Oroyan who stated, “If she’d have only asked I would have shared my cucumbers with her. What upsets me the most is, how are they going to help this poor delusional woman by locking her up? With the price of organic vegetables these days I don’t blame her.”
After Slaiku was properly stowed, Officer Busholvavichwikauski’s advisory, “Vegetables and their effects,” ensued. “On our raids, we find more basement gardens, than we find Meth labs ,” warns Busholvavichwikauski.