where I work, #1

This is a dance studio. There are times when being in a dance studio is the most comforting situation in the world. I've spent hours and days and years in the studio--various rooms with mostly white walls, long windows, and wide, empty floors--and it still surprises me to discover how much they, any of them, can feel like home.
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Yesterday, I started rehearsals with Christian Burns. Christian is working on a new piece (tentatively titled "Mid-Century") for the premier of his company, burns/work. The starting idea for the work is the tipping point of eras, the mid-place where one thing becomes something else. There are so many things to throw into this hopper: furniture design, music, statuary, formal dance, social dance, science and literature and history. It's such a huge idea, easily applied to historic events and personal relationships alike. The whole world is up for grabs and open for play. It could be an overwhelming deluge of things to sift through, but I'm excited for the moment when we've picked out our anchors and themes, and when things start to feel like they cohere together. There's a stage of a project when it feels like everything you read and see and think seems to point effortlessly to the thing you're working on, as if the whole world has arranged itself, serendipitously, to support whatever it is you're trying to say. It's a great feeling, and it's even more satisfying when the things you're grasping at are far-flung and incongruous. Magic! Bunny rabbit. Hat. What do they have in common? Not much, really, except that they make up an odd rebus for vanishing and reappearing.

We'll be showing excerpts of the piece during the spring, and will hopefully have some fuller performances later in the year. I can't wait.
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If you happen to be reading this from Germany, please go see "Bande à Part." It's a new piece featuring the spectacular dance skills of two of my very brilliant friends, the magnificent Daisy Ransom Phillips and the inimitable Coco. Performances are this Saturday and Sunday, the 12th and 13th, in Berlin. I can't understand the website blurb (it's in German), but will reproduce it here in case you can:

"MIA: Ich denke doch, dass Marsellus Wallace, mein Mann und Ihr Boss, Ihnen gesagt hat, Sie sollen MICH ausführen und alles tun, WAS ICH WILL. Also: Ich will tanzen, ich will gewinnen, ich will diese Trophäe. Also, tanzen Sie gut." (aus "Pulp Fiction")

(photo: Coco)