April Asides

I just wrote a lecture that I've "premiered" here in China, first to NYU Shanghai, and then to Shanghai Theatre Academy. Both lectures speak to how we are always being one and being many, which is its title. While writing it, new words came to me to describe what the state of being-many supports in us; that ability to form and reform as a continually changing condition that is based in the lived experience of being many forms. So that the base of our action is a state in which we are giving as many parts of ourselves as possible, their own individual relationship to the earth. This is what I call freedom. Then, the body, which is always also a mind, is ready to form anew into a complexity of configurations of being appropriate to the moment’s call or need. This amazing instability is an extraordinary gift of being human. I say “So now notice, this dancing body is more than a shape moving through space. It is an effervescence, a continually shifting and changing constitutional form because it is many many parts, parts within parts, parts that reconfigure to form unique agreements for action in relations to another moving body. This is a constitutionally flexible instability, changeable on all levels from its organization to its materiality.”

I really enjoy the word “constitution” when thinking of how the body organizes itself. It allows for many changing parts, each which is significant in its particular moment of arising.

This is also what I call fun. This noticing what is always already here, nothing made up, just a recognition of the gift of being dance. Yeay.