Thursday, April 14, 2011

Running

This is the poem I wrote after the first spacing rehearsal of "The Well/Interruption". In this dance there is a lot of running and change of direction. I asked the dancers: Why are you running? Where are you going? The poem is my response, as the choreographer, to these questions.

"I'm running to get away and wrap underneath my sides
split sides, support sides,
sinking sides, surrounded around
and between or sometimes.
Sometimes there is strength
sometimes there is nothing.
I can't really tell and I can't
really understand what I'm running from:
It is oblique, opaque and understated and misunderstood.
I'm going here, right to where I am. Right to where I have been.
Wondering and wondering back to that place
that I always end up
up is where I always go and up
is where I am here and now and
never behind. How is that true?
How is it possible for truth?
So I go and go and catch and fetch
for you. I'm looking for you
around the corner of my body
around and around and around
looking..."

From Lau-Tzu

"Men [and women] are born soft and supple;
dead, they will only be stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail."

-Tao Te Ching, chapter 76

Academic Symposium I am Directing: