Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Planting Moon<\/p>\n
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Still thinking about the performance last night. \u00a0The direct to the emotions connection with movement. \u00a0And the book \u00a0Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists. \u00a0<\/em>In this book the author discusses the dynamic interaction between Cage’s elevation of sound, all sound, to music or at least potentially musical and the thoughts of choreographer\/dancer Merce Cunningham who saw movement, all movement, as dance, or at least potentially dance.<\/p>\n In particular Cage wanted to decouple music from dance so that dance did not interpret music and music did not happen as background for dance. \u00a0This lead them to have concerts where music would happen, then dance, then music, then dance. \u00a0And, the music might be banging pots, someone reading the New York Times want ads or the scrape of a chair on the floor while the dance might be walking, running, jumping, embracing.<\/p>\n Last night I followed the movement of salmon upstream as Emily and Aretha lay on the floor and made sinuous, flowing motions with their whole bodies. \u00a0I cheered in my heart when they threw up their arms, cringed when they showed snarling faces and hoped when they shed their skins.<\/p>\n These links between their movement and my heart happened because my body felt their movements, all those mirror neurons firing, firing, firing sending me a message not from the dancers, but from my own body as stimulated by them. \u00a0This is not intellectual processing at all. \u00a0It’s kinesthetic. \u00a0By embracing silence throughout the work except in very episodic short monologues Emily’s work created niicugni, her people’s (Yu’pik) word for Pay Attention, Listen.<\/p>\n This work had great coherence with the lighting provided by the fish-skin lanterns, created in the traditional Yu’pik manner. \u00a0In a masterful lighting design the lanterns flickered, came on and off, featured this part of the stage or that through being hung at varying heights and lit separately.<\/p>\n Emily has topics in the first two elements of her trilogy that are close to my heart: \u00a0home and the land. \u00a0What is home? \u00a0Where is home? \u00a0Why is home? \u00a0Can we have more than one home? \u00a0Do we have more than one home? \u00a0How much relationship does home have to the land?<\/p>\n Land. \u00a0Mother earth or grandmother earth. \u00a0That without which we do not survive. \u00a0The womb from which we are born and the grave to which we return. \u00a0How do we remember the land? \u00a0Honor her lifegiving powers? \u00a0What does it mean to be connected to the land?<\/p>\n These are essential question, never minor or subsidiary, but at the heart of each persons, each animals, each plants life and its living. \u00a0It is a canard I know, but modern civilization does distance us from the idea of home and especially from the land itself. \u00a0It is always there, supporting us, feeding us, connecting us but so often we assume it, ignore it, abuse it, poison it.<\/p>\n Emily’s work is important. \u00a0Thanks Allison for introducing me to it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Planting Moon Still thinking about the performance last night. \u00a0The direct to the emotions connection with … Continue reading Niicugni<\/span>