Author: norarainethompson

• Responding to Nora Chipaumire at BAM

  Dogs barking fighting
  Colorful clothes line sides but all wear black
  Colorful panels line sky but we are in the dark
  Gloves on, mitts up, lights up, spar time
  Whistle screaming
  Surrounded surround we are the surround
  In the bump and play
  Saved and sheltered
  Throwing clay not rocks
  Throwing shade not rocks
  Hallelujah hallelujah is sung peacefully
  While someone fights someone duels
  They all play and contain
  Til someone gets killed
  Did taking a life remind him of being dog?
  Ceilings become walls
  And dogs become smooth walkers again
  And the murdered picks up a saxophone
  And descent is welcome, grind in the light
  And the dogs bark again, further away now
  And ceiling become themselves again
  Gloves back on
  Boys box and Girls dance
  And Boys become prep school boys
  Getting everyone moving
  Multicolor sticks signal welcome and flamboyance and and
  Until colorful sticks become Weapons and posturing

  While we were distracted by guns the big dog descended
  And everyone sat down to talk

  And sing
  And sing about wind
  Sing to the falsity of borders
  And one by one
  turn into shadow dogs
  Reincarnated again cycling thru again
  And turn back into people barking to the past

• Responding to Clara Furey at City Center

  In flat colorless world of flat colorless pink
  A beat a bop a bob a gag a hiccup
  Pushes into color
  Pushes others into definition
  Primary definitional color
  Primary definitional thrums pulled out and pasted out and copied out
  Where we work and we fight and we fuck and we go again and we hold the beat and we hold it together by never stopping a heart
  Holding you by letting them leap just here and there and across
  Never feeling my skin but always feeling your wake

  And ah!
  You realize, if you keep going
  You can fly! you can fly!
  In this just going place, this just happening place, this place that will never have happened that will never be done
  You can fly and laugh and float to the top rope taut if you don’t stop

  Until the lightening comes
  Until past any sound the lightening keeps coming
  Until the lightening is coming beyond any speed of sound
  Until and beyond there is only flash
  Only stillness can hold this speed

• Culturebot: Maia Chao and Lena Engelstein in conversation with Nora Raine Thompson

  I talk with Maia Chao (director) and Lena Engelstein (choreographer) to talk about American Idle, their public performance work of doppelgangers shown on July 9, 2025 in the middle of Times Sqaure. We discuss how projection and reality, symbol and intimacy, meet in the busy hyperreal zone of Times Square through a performance of doubles. Read the interview here.

• Responding to Mette Ingvartsen at Akademietheater

  Cats (the musical) but punk and also puppies
  Horny and buoyed by beat
  Scrappy trying to get by
  Crappy trying to get tired
  “I want to resist” and “abide by the darkness”
  I want to laugh at myself and my delicious doggy tease

  Green light makes every color turn into every color

• Responding to Maia Chao and Lena Engelstein in Times Square (but on video)

  Two grids
  (I want third and fourth and fifth grids, I imagine them under the ground in the upside down on the other planes)

  The not quite perfect unison
  Is she in it is she not in it
  Characters, I know them
  Casual kiss, breaching and electric
  Dancing as avatars, soft repetitive wavy nothings
  Open tapping hands, like praying but gimme gimme, like consuming but like begging
  Splitting timelines
  The clean line arabesque selfie
  The clean line waiting
  The accidental soundtrack of children screaming
  Stuck between grids, slow between planes
  The jarring feeling of – there’s only one
  Beg and you shall receive: suitcases and bags and basketballs and flowers and babies and coolers and fans and guitars
  Some stuff points to other stuff the stuff of the outside the stuff of the screens
  Desperation of looking for lost self (I don’t see you!!!!!!)

  Sanctity of selfie (therapy)
  Sanctity of group pic (church)

  Bodies on ground splayed and abnormal but normal
  A natural response to the exhaustion of being a person, being a person in New York City, being a visitor in New York City, the no where to sit-ness, the no where for suitcases-ness, the no bathroom-ness
  The accidental soundtrack of dancing queen

  Sanctity of party song (unity)

  Countdown countwho countwhat countwhen
  Kissing yourself kissing your alternate reality kissing the fake kissing the fact of the fiction embracing the fact of the fiction accepting the fact of the fiction indulging the fact of the fiction romancing the spectacle making real the spectacle realizing the unreal reading the mirror reaching down into the depths of the simulation to kiss again

• The Brooklyn Rail: Generating Glory

  In Generator, Neva Guido pushes out a string of shining personas to investigate the performances that make up a spectacular world. I reflect and respond in this essay, which can be read here.

• Responding to Marion Spencer at NYU

  In darkness in golden
  We’re caught up
  Tied up with you
  Knotted
  Not holding the line
  But held, held up
  Then bending it
  Letting it gleam billow blow so it can change us
  Make us reflect
  In light you are only hands and feet and chest and a matte sky
  In the mess you are only walking, plodding, keeping going
  In the brightness you are only rushing, only rushing at me, eyes wide
  In light actually really you are only eyes
  Creature, bigger, endless
  Retreating
  Coming alive when the net is lifted
  Multiplying under its levity
  Filling the air with tangle and shine

• Responding to Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Morgan Gregory, and Paris Cullen at the Judson Church

  Johnnie:

  We’re at home upstairs in my bedroom
  Or downstairs in the basement den
  Ring light disco light setting the mood for a teenage release
  This is the passionate time of quick development, I said
  From praise
  To prep
  To shake
  To praise
  To heave
  To hold

  Morgan:

  You get ready casually
  (Right right right?)
  To speak every language fluently
  Translating and sliding between idioms
  Somehow making us all understand with mouths open
  Clean weep
  Virtuosic sweep
  Stutter freak
  Daring each other to flip the split and drum a bit
  Control my gaze, already done

  Paris:

  A rainbow descends watched by the sky (the sky, heaven; the sky, bird)
  Into this landed world where falls are soft and impact is sweet and weight is rolled earthly bounced and the cheerful side of love
  Paused by the calls of sky dropping bits of life, fruit
  Paused by the calls of sky breathing, wind
  Who knew the boy band was so powerful as to make us see the before and the after in one body
  The power of unison somehow aligns us, makes us see where the rain comes from, even as the heavens keep shitting oranges
  This is an exercise in finding out where the fine line lies, where it suspends, what it separates, how she was born, and how far she’ll extend, over how many mortal heads

• Responding to Jo Warren at The Brick

  in your technicolor dream,
  your smile has a back side
  and your back hand is weeping
  and your teeth are in the right place
  but your mouths are winking like wet cement making stars out of traffic lights

  in your dream,
  sex is squishing
  and hitting is squishing
  and kissing is smoking

  inside the comfort of a worn chair cross the hall,
  in the interval before the laugh track,
  we can fight and fuck and find out it’s all poetry
  only eyes locking into eyes looking into eyes
  rainbow tunnels of furiously “we will keep going”

• Responding to Lena Engelstein and Lisa Fagan at New York Live Arts

  The absurdity and loneliness of self importance
  Pushes up when alone on stage
  A baby, saying, look at me
  A rock falling, saying, fall off me
  A face saying, I am the face of the network, I am important