Wednesday, June 22, 2011

careless



My friend, Maya Hey, recently posted this video on Facebook. It had been a couple of years since I last saw it, and the sheer bombastic intensity of it surprised me. "Careless" was choreographed by Alex Ketley and premiered in 2006.

Alex challenged all these thoughts I had about being a "good" dancer, about being beautiful and being honest. The girls I danced with were maddening and wonderful, willing to crash into the air and through the floor and run full tilt at one another in the assumption that the collision would be worth it. It was a frustrating and exhausting project, but it shifted my ideals and virtues. Looking at it, I barely recognize those wild girls, newly let loose in unfamiliar movement, but I can appreciate now (and I didn't then; I was so stubborn!) how much being in this piece changed me as a dancer. It cracked open doors in my head in walls that I didn't even know were there.

I think it's also one of my favorite pieces that I've performed. Hurtling through ten minutes of extremely driven, violent movement, I felt like I was falling to pieces and exploding at the same time.
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 Some of those girls I haven't seen in a very long time; at least one of them I'll never see again. It's funny (in the odd, melancholy, slightly discomfiting sense) to think about how, sometimes, the people who keep you company while your life becomes entirely different exit or fade away.

3 comments:

Kat Howard said...

I love this piece - the sharpness and power in the movement is exhilarating to watch. Thanks for sharing it.

Anonymous said...

This...is beautiful. Haunting. I can't even grasp at the right words.

People, even when they exit our lives, change it. They leave marks, dents, foot prints. Sometimes, they are like invisible tattoos, inked on our soul. That way, even though they are not present in your life, you still carry them with you.

Thank you for sharing this. ~Ali

Monica said...

Oh I love this energy. Big and expressive and kinetic. A perpetual motion machine.