JOURNAL DANCE PROJECT-entry #1
My mother died when I was a young girl. I have spent a lifetime wondering who she really was-what her inner world looked like, and how she looked out at the events and people surrounding her. Now that I have two daughters of my own, I write in journals so that my girls can know about different pieces of me at different times in their lives. I have shelves filled with notebooks that I hope someday will shed light on my struggles and triumphs. I am driven to record our everyday life. I rarely go anywhere without a notebook.
In my journal I travel through stages of decisions, plan what to buy at the supermarket, write puppet
shows, voice my perspectives on relationships, issues and dreams. I sketch puppets in my notebooks, I complain, I search for answers, and I document the mundane. I am creating a record of my
life, the good and the boring, the ugly and sublime-all mashed together in what I hope is a vibrant representation of a woman's life.
Now, this past Fall caught me totally off guard. My youngest daughter started kindergarten. All of my plans of what I would do when “finally had the time” evaporated and I found myself
bewildered-with an aching heart. I would write and dance and walk in the woods and write and dance some more, but I couldn't articulate what was happening inside. And then in October, my older daughter broke her knee and we spent the rest of the Fall shuttling around to doctor's offices and then physical therapy appointments. We didn't hang out at the playgrounds and breathe fresh air in the afternoons before doing homework and getting ready for dinner.
It all shook me up. All of this change. Ouch.
So I decided to create a dance, taking the events that I was pouring my heart out about in my journal and turning it into a physical and artistic manifestation of those events and feelings. It was the only way that I could make greater sense of the transitions, the feelings that I couldn't quite articulate. I would create a 3-D version of a journal over a specific period of time. The kids would be able to SEE their life-Fall 2013, my life, made into art. And the artistic process would teach me how to heal along the way.
I started with the largest and most obvious events-Ruby going to kindergarten and Lily breaking her knee. Then I examined my experiences making lunches in the mornings before school- the staggering routine and fatigue, the patience required to put together a lunch while someone refuses to get out of bed or yells at me to tie their shoes. I choreographed a section about opening cabinets and the refrigerator, searching for foods that the kids would actually eat. In my movements I dance a private world where I talk on the phone to girlfriends while washing dishes, daydream while I straighten the house, plan and dream ideas-some of which just fade into my daily musings and some which are brought to fruition. This became a section that I refer to as 'Reverie'.
Noticing the themes of topics that I was writing about in my journal, three states of being emerged as
starting points for choreography-SOLITUDE,REVERIE and the powerful and repetitive execution of CHORES. I am currently working on connecting the three states into one larger story: The stillness and gentleness of 'Solitude,' capturing what it feels like to get up in the morning before anybody else is awake and to gradually wake up, stretching and breathing into the silence, and the fierceness and futility of 'Chores,' inspired by a dance called 'Maculele' that I learned in Capoiera class. And then there is the 'Reverie' section, with the many moods and states of being that were flowing through me this past Fall.
As I develop this choreography in the studio, I want to honor the unseen machinations of our lives.
Sometimes I think about the women I know and I imagine us all in our private worlds, cleaning, cooking, doing our work or art or volunteering, linked by our purposefulness and the inherent beauty of our endeavors. I hope that by bringing my journal to life I can show that our lives are filled with art, and moments to honor. Dance can be where we recognize how glorious it is to do dishes, to be alive.
I will be performing this work on March 1 at the RAW Gala. http://www.rivertownartistsworkshop.org
*My capoeira class rocks:
https://www.facebook.com/cainacapoeira
