The picture is of my two beautiful dancers, Kim and Molly, in a pose from the duet I'm premiering at Celebrate Dance on Sunday afternoon. The piece moved, as a choreographer, relatively quickly as soon as I realized what it was actually about. I went into the studio thinking I was making a piece about the culture of jealousy in which women are raised. I walked out realizing that I was making a piece about the relationship between me and my brother. Our minds work in strange ways; sometimes it takes moving around the space to understand what's going on inside of them. Kinesthetic revelation I guess.
The solo I'm performing is about a father/daughter relationship. I'm really into this study of familial politics and chemistry right now. Perhaps it's the time I've been away from my family. Perhaps it's this idea of starting a family of my own. I don't know, but it's permeating everything I do, everything I write. I can't seem to get away from it, even when I try.
I think it's also why I'm so frustrated with my seeming inability to find a performance space for the winter. I either get shot down or no one calls back at all. The more I work, the more I have to say, and now I feel like I have no venue in which to do it. I'm a bit shocked at myself that the urge to make my own art is so unbelievably strong. There was always a part of me who thought that I would be perfectly fine with being the assistant the rest of my life. I'm fairly positive that isn't the case now.
On the other side of the world, the Lebanese are fighting to keep their families together as they begin to rebuild, as they begin to try and understand what's happened to their lives. My brother sent a link to a series of interviews of people living in al-Khiyam, Lebanon, done by the BBC. Everyone feels differently about Hezbollah, about what's happening in their country, about Israel, but the same thing rings through for all of them: they want their families safe and their lives to be what they were. An indicative quote:
She insists she is happy, "because what they destroy we can rebuild, unlike if a friend or a relative, a father or a child, is killed".
She's lucky. We're all lucky if our friends and family stay safe and close. I can't imagine being in a place like so many Middle Eastern countries, where wondering if your loved ones are safe is a daily (hourly) concern; where you never know when you wake up if one of them will be gone forever.
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