Secrets & Motion duet in Plath land... it's complicated.

There is something beautiful about someone that hits the highest of highs and lowest of lows.  Maybe it's awful (first-hand) to swing through life in that manner, but it's also how to experience all that the process of living can offer.  Cue Sylvia Plath.  

I read The Bell Jar in late elementary school (before I quite understood the subject matter, though I made it my goal to explore all the same), and most recently revisited the Unabridged Journals as I tried to make my way through a new duet I'm creating for Secrets & Motion.  The duet transpires between two female dancers/characters with a very complicated relationship.  One has a secret that both know; the piece explores the brain space between the two and the mental decisions on how to reveal the secret, who reveals the secret and why.  After developing the initial concept I looked to Plath as I remembered a seed of authenticity in the following quote:

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.” 

No, this quote doesn't donate subject matter to the duet in its action words, but more in its honest coinciding duality.  It depicts a quick moment of realization as words are tumbling out into a waiting ear, the very human quick change of opinion when it feels like you can't turn back for (self) fear of contradiction.

I began the rehearsal process with improv based on having my female dancers take turns restricting their bodies to face away from the audience.  That became stale in the duration of one rehearsal.  Fortunately (at the same time as I was rereading the Plath Journals) Luminarium was invited to a 'musing' (sort of an open rehearsal) with our dear friends at Monkeyhouse, where I presented the main ideas behind this piece as an experimental movement exercise.  The movers paired up and each duo magically found a different way to express the duet relationship.  Some used parallel movements, some translated their partner through pedestrian gestures, some brought in vocally-made sound and breath, some went in two separate directions!  How wonderful it is to have such resources...  Combine an array of Monkeyhouse/Luminarium explorations in movement with a reread of word-inspiration and I was ready to face rehearsals once more.

I won't keep elaborating on the rehearsal process, since we are only two weeks out from the show (come!) but I will speak on a few deliberate choices I've made.  I've decided not to painstakingly explain the relationship between the dancers.  This means that lots of audience members will approach me after the show eager to share their theories on the two being lovers, enemies, etc etc etc.  It is what it is, but it's also increasingly harder for two females to dance together onstage without a label of any sort!   I've also decided not to overly share the plot with the audience.  Yes, there is a secret that is dangerously on the verge of being shared against ones will, but is it for her own good?  Is the share instead catty and destructive?  To harm or to help?  Either way is it right?  The true embodiment of Facebook's "it's complicated" status (yep, I went there).  Sorry audience members, perhaps there aren't right answers or perhaps you are resolute in your solution to the danced plot... but I promise you'll be ok, even without my clarification.

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To end, here are some quotes from the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath that are either great reading, or that freak me out as they are intensely similar to my own life and ways of living it...  The similarities will end, however, before my head ends up in an oven.

I promise...

"Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning. ...

I love people.  Everybody.  I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection.  Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me.  My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either.  I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person.  But I am not omniscent.  I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have.  And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and critiicizing life and take the easy way out.  To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn; this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love. ...

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life.  I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head."

Gray area

Day one of a multi-week employment hiatus between summer jobs and fall.  This is both the pro and con of being associated with the field of education/kids.  My biggest problem right now is finding balance.  I haven't had a day off or an actual vacation in.... I don't even know.  When I took a day off during the year it was most likely to do something else for another job!  I'm currently trying to balance being responsible/getting my house in order, four brand new pieces of choreography, producing a festival, trying to take a moment to relax, searching for a new stimulating day job, catching up on work for the multiple orgs I am committed to, and so much more.

This sounds complain-y, but it's not, exactly.  I love most of the things I am currently doing, I just don't exactly love that I have zero free time.  There are a lot of gray areas, since sometimes I consider working on choreography or a new project using free time, buttttt it's also work to an extent.

So.  Before I really start rambling, the goal is to get boring work done, get the exciting work done, and carve out a tiny chunk of time just for me over the next couple of weeks.  Additional sleep would probably be good, but we are heading into 24-Hr ChoreoFest so...