I’m not always in the habit of sharing things in a timely manner on my blog (yeah, I know that kinda defeats the purpose sometimes, but I hope to remain determinant on what matters most). When I got involved in this dance performance, Anne Gehman‘s One Hundred Giving Way, the only thing I cared about was being part of it.
A bunch of friends and family did come out to see it, and that meant a lot. It was amazing to hear their varied and largely positive experiences. One family member said this: “My feelings fluctuated between perplexity, amusement, vexation, whimsy, and delight.” The show was certainly provocative and fluid, so I can imagine it was impactful in different ways for different observers, and over the course of the show. From the inside, as a dancer and participant, it was wonderful. It was a practice that required deep sensing of the space, the cultivation of mutual awareness, trust, and responsible freedom. I had the image of soil being tilled, the deep rupturing of earth after a harvest, unearthing a multitude of latent feelings and longings, a visible revelation, internally, of facets of my own being that had become occluded in the natural process of living. Yeah, I know, there was some serious stuff going on… and there still is… just by virtue of having been opened in a particular way. If we are lucky, real art does that.
So, suffice to conclude that this sweet sign I passed to and from every rehearsal and show, outside the Potiker Theatre (on UCSD’s campus), connects to a wild set of experiences and connections, visceral and emotional, and therefore, stands as a small piece of evidence of a much deeper, richer memory that will reside permanently in my bones. Big sigh.
You can see photos of the performance by Jim Carmody on his website at http://jimcarmody.zenfolio.com/100gw