Roadtrip Dances: Live Free or Die (8)

Preparing like an Olympic diver in New Hampshire dusk, really just squaring my toes to an invisible line in the grass. The grass is anything but lush, clunky sandy anthills spanning the distance between brittle stalks of formerly-green blades - it’s even sharper at the bottom. I fill my lungs, feeling foolish and amused as Russell stands all-too-close, recording with one of our phones. Observations before I depart, despite and in accordance with my attempts to be present: my mom standing in a golden-lit window, unaware and accepting of my strange backyard actions while washing dishes from the hissing faucet before dinner, the familiar pace of my dad’s dense footsteps before the creak of the basement door hinges. All of it is familiar; being ridiculous in the backyard with my now-husband, the noises created by my parents, an infrequent bark in the distance, the slope of the hill.

Lowering my body towards the ground, letting body weight take over, forcefully rolling down what used to look like a mountain. I’m aware of the edges of my body, the outsides of my arms striking the dirt over and over again, just like the small tidal wave my sister created when she burst our small pool in the mid-90s. Rolling out of my tumble at the bottom of the hill, parts of my body still pounding from the inside out, I walk out of the performance, smooth dust from my dress, and join everyone for dinner.

View full video here. 

A small slice of New Hampshire movement exploration as I try to finish up #roadtripdances for now (MA & RI I'm still coming for ya). While not so much a public site I explored lots of physicality and rolling on this hill as a younger human (mainly because it's in my childhood home backyard). Haven't rolled down it in about 15 years and it felt great. 📸: @russellholman who held all his giggling til the end. What a pro. #roadtrip #newhampshire #hill #tumble #roll #jillcametumblingafter #trees #didntrollintothebrook #velocity #childhoodmemories #dance #danceeverywhere

See this Instagram video by @kholman * 11 likes

Things I know/Things I'm not entitled to know but I know anyways

Midnight on a Friday and I'm staring into a tiny ceramic dish in the kitchen holding three bobbypins, two quarters, a nickel, some incidental coffee grounds and a screw. I'm sure everyone has a vessel like this, and I can't remember the last time I wore the bobbypins. To my left is a letter that's not addressed to me, the magnetic pull is strong. My focus on the dish is belittled by my side eye on the letter, but to be honest I've already read it. 

How exhilarating it is to be a validated fly on the wall. Being mute but also unasked, all the while knowing the ending to the chapter or story in your bones. If I was a better writer I could've taken a close compositional guess at this letter years ago, but instead it's been lurking in the back of my brain, every now and then drifting into the present for contemplation. The time hadn't been right. 

I'm building a new duet where my primary twosome maintains gripping communication with each other while they are surrounded by observing bodies that don't get to engage, and I'm fairly sure this would be a moment akin to one of my silent observers. I've been struggling with the presence and tasks of the observers as their task is just to be present, making a sort of internal captain's log of their experience. This is the most difficult part as a creator of performance: importing enough sensation, cause and effect from this exact point in time into the work so that maybe my performers can find it, and maybe just maybe the audience members can pick up on the magic that's happening live. It's impossible to bottle experience, but perhaps possible to rediscover.  

In other thoughts, how great would it be to be a professional fly on the wall?

Road trip waiting

30 minutes left to wait to get on a flight to Philly, sit for an hour and a half, scramble to another terminal to catch a back to back connecting flight, to sit again for three hours.  I already got the deluxe TSA pat down (perils of a one way ticket), stared angrily at the tiny airport Starbucks for a bit (reflux-gate day 5, past the withdrawals and now just feeling snarky about caffeine), and settled on an overpriced and really unsatisfying bottle of airport water.  That was all thirty minutes ago. I'm currently most aware of the amount of sitting such a trip will take, and that's making my fidgety self just a bit nervous. Waiting. Perhaps this project has also just revealed itself as an exercise in patience. 

The problem is I'm so not in sync with my mindful self at present. Will Russell remember to tell J&C (who are watching Twyla today) to feed our dog breakfast? Will he remember to give them the bunch of kale I snipped from the garden at 5:30 this morning? What if I miss my connector? How ever will life go on without me for four days at home in an extreme heatwave??!! Spoiler alert, all of these things will be fine and I know that. Let's blame my lack of zen on my lack of coffee, that makes sense.

People watching for meditation. A tired looking mom and dad walking back and forth telling a wired toddler to "use her words." An older man talking to everyone, he hasn't been on a plane in 40 years and is proud to share he's going to visit his kids. A really young mom with a baby strapped on her loudly preplanning her first plane ride experience and making an epic iPhone movie. A young woman wearing a winter parka, shopping on her laptop for parkas. Lots of business people. A pair of women flipping through their selfies for quality assurance. An older couple also people-watching, we made silent eye contact. People with headphones, books, newspapers phones, drinks, really weird breakfast choices (pickle flavored chips). The majority of men have tucked their shirts in, very few women have done the same. The woman in the parka has removed her jacket and ceased shopping for parkas.

8 more minutes to go. 

a birthday thought jumble

11:59pm and I'm sitting in my sun chair looking at the moon, kind of annoyed at myself that I didn't turn off the porch light because the backlighting is making for slightly sub-par night sky viewing but I want to be in my chair at midnight to ring in 29. (Russell must've put a new bright bulb in the lamp, I don't remember it being this bright.) At 11pm I decided I wanted to cross something off my to-do list before the new year and finally put the ancient Alice in Wonderland book pages in the frames I purchased this week. (Not super nice frames because they're expensive, but good enough I think.) I still need another frame. At 11:51 I determined I could spend the last few minutes of year 28 being strong and busy, so I carried all of our weights upstairs in advance of tomorrow's party. First the 15lb pair as they're our mid-size option, then the 25lb pair which started out easy until I couldn't fit my hand between the weight rack and the wall and forgot I could put down the weight in my other hand, then the easy 8lb pair and delivered my worn copy of A Director Prepares to my office bookshelf. The third floor thermostat clock said 12:00 but I knew it was early so I sassily glanced at my cell phone which declared it to be only 11:56 and headed outside. Here I am. (It's actually 12:09 now since I've been writing this.)

I'm really happy with right now. A simple descriptor, but it works.  I'm happy with the work that I make, happy with how I treat other people and myself, happy with the relationships in my life, happy with who I've come to be at present. As a twenty-something female I can sit here and acknowledge the amount of time I've spent trying on different identities, making some poor and/or laughable choices, and wasting time deserting myself, especially in my teenage years. Somewhere between then and now, closer to this side of the scale, I realized I don't have to try anymore and that I really like me... However awkward and ridiculous and awful (creative?) at punctuation that I care to be. I'm very lucky to have 'happy' in my life in this too often disgusting, unbelievably warped world we are all living in at present. 

Another unraveling birthday tangent... I'm 29 and I feel just accomplished enough. Incredibly motivated and eager to keep forging onwards for the next several decades, but not displeased or resentful of past choices. Nope, I haven't been awarded a MacArthur genius grant as a 20 year old dance wizard or anything of the sort, but I excitedly know what I'm about to start making right now, in the land of new art, and I have so many individuals in my life that trust me to make work for them that I constantly get to rediscover such gratitude. My work ruminates on observations of my immediate world, which allows me to process and self-improve and hopefully to set a pattern and a precedent that might reach a few other people. I get to do what I want, professionally for myself and for others, I also get to study what I want and constantly learn. Cool.

Wrapping this thought spew up because I refuse to use conventional bug-spray and I think the mosquitos found me. Also I heard a rustling in the privet hedge and skunks and opossums come out in the city at night; I'd like to have a skunk-scent and rabies-free birthday celebration. Also-also I want to go admire my framed Alice and read a decidedly un-academic gruesome detective novel in bed until I'm too scared to fall asleep but I fall asleep anyways. I hope this is always adulthood. See ya, 28.

Dancing in public, the Kardashians, late night discontent

True confession.

I am writing a progress report for grad school (yes, at 1am a few days before its due date - I have a hard time tearing myself away from the actual work and studies to actually document my learning), and I'm watching my first ever episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians. I deserve every cringe and nose wrinkle that might've just rippled across your face. To be fair, I need background noise to write and if I turn on something interesting I'll watch or listen to it instead of working. 

Anyways.

The point of this admission is that I tuned in for a split second while grabbing tea, when two of them were discussing an upcoming appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show and the fact that they might have to dance as they entered the show. They were downright mortified by the idea of having to dance. Mortified! Dancing is something the human race/human body has known how to do since before we were homo sapiens (don't fact check my late night rants), and here are these uber-privileged millionaire broads with every resource in the world at their fingertips... too scared to dance. This is amusing; it connotes that there's a 'wrong' way to dance, that there is some sort of way one can follow the impulses of their body to music that is inherently unacceptable in the eyes of society. Unfortunately this mortal fear doesn't just plague the Kardashians, but also targets some wedding guests, club goers, high school dance goers, audience members asked to participate and many more.  Sad! Sure, the US (and some of Europe, to an extent) doesn't have the cultural dance traditions and history of Africa, Asia and South America, but can we really not find pleasure in moving our bodies authentically, regardless of what it looks like? Where do the unfortunate roots of "step-touch to the beat with very little upper body involvement" trace back to... who was the jerk that declared that as the social dance movement aesthetic of the US? 

Food for thought.

Do me a favor, at least go have a moment of dance glory (in private, if you must) in my honor.

Warmth

It's 72 degrees in Boston today - "unseasonably warm" as the news proclaims - and I feel the need to stop and think about that. Thoughts on climate change aside, I'm wearing a shirt with no sleeves (and a pair of pajama shorts if we are being honest here, because I've done nothing but read essays and paint a room this morning), and as I flip pages in my backyard I can feel the warmth touching the outermost layer of skin and intensifying as it soaks into my body. This sensation is just about my favorite feeling in the world (though I'm hesitant to admit I also love the helpless, out-of-my-control feel of being tossed about on a good roller coaster).

I've been thinking a great deal about sensation from the inside out, but this first brilliantly warm day is a definite outside-in sensation that's a constant in each year of my life. While I can conjure up the essence of many internal sensations after the fact, this is one of few external sensations I can replay. "Unseasonability" aside, I wait for it all winter long knowing that the first bone warming day of the year will always arrive.

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2/3/16

Today I spent a considerable chunk of a 2.75 hour meeting admiring the distinct silhouette of a completely average black desk lamp sitting against a window allowing diffused light from a grey drizzly nondescript day to gently enter the room. It was beautiful but entirely unimportant and my intent was to grab a quick photo of the moment on my phone at the end of the meeting - before becoming distracted by the next task - but in the last 5 minutes of conversation the lamp was knocked off the windowsill, lightbulb glass shattering everywhere.