A little life
Women’s work
Complaints?
Splat splat
Polaroids go
Make the show run the show while making the show
Plot the performance in the performance
A funeral (how to embalm) (ass out)
A wedding (falling clouds, wrapped up clouds for the man in white) (a waltz with a piano)
And hell
Where we dance
And air wind blown up blown out
A flying screaming tube of dance
Leaky vessels
Pouring myself into leaky vessels
I find out if they can hold it, carry it, keep me off the ground where laughing and crying and leaking might happen
It being me
It being this buzzing between us
I ask, no, request, you to see my passion
I’ll hold it flat for you so you can see it well
Hold it clear in my fists and mouth and eyes
Clear without smile
Did you see?
Fine, I’ll show you how loud a little emptiness can be
Turning away I’ll push it against walls, topple it, rage in public private
then leak until I’m gone
A door opens on the big stone
The one big enough to be a tomb stone
Why do we mark tombs, death places, with stones?
Why wet a rock, to make it shine?
Why let its dust enter our lungs?
Perhaps we’re envious of their timeline, so much longer to become, decay, undo themselves
Between two friends, someone has to go first, become first, decay first, undo first
It won’t be the rock
Daddy dis hard
What if the embryo can talk
And he’s a drag queen and he’s a performer
What if sperm has been doing competition dance for eight years
What if the balloon delivery guy is really good at cheerleading
What if all trolls are also your therapist and your therapist is trolling you and she’s hot and authoritative
Friends in the blue
Tracing where they’ve been
what they cut out
what they took from each other
When it hurt
When it hit
When it sweat with good
When the sweat laughed
Sleeping side by side
Early or late going and running
Dreaming side by side
Running a late dream
Only you could keep up
I write in response to Andros Zins-Browne’s new work, from the position of a dance artist, former staff member of Danspace Project, and PhD student in Performance Studies. In this reflection, I draw from my knowledge of St. Mark’s Church, conversations with Zins-Browne, and writing from scholar and poet, Fred Moten, who is an advisor of my academic work. The full text can be read or listened to on Danspace Project’s Journal.
This conversation follows my inquiries into the impossible and infinite realms of Nacera Belaza’s choreographic process. MRPJ #58/59 can be purchased on Movement Research’s website.
there she is in her hardened shell of whiteness
of you can do it if you just tried
of calling it murder
is she bleeding or leaking?
dragging around her future, fighting age
little naked imp plays alone, but with herself as a first friend
the trio of ballerinas work dutifully, dancing their dance with smiles
when the blood spurts and the screams start we leave to see the source material
candice owens and the white youtuber projected into little squares in a cold warehouse where their presence is threatening
going back in she is in labor now
moaning and singing and swaying
imp covers herself in blood
ballerinas dance without music smiles unfailing
settled in a smiling pile
the end is when imp leaves
but actually
i can’t really recall how it ended
facts are simply perception and something else that i can’t make out amidst their clapping
an intractable desire for back space in a room with no back room
i see you seeing me they say when we lock eyes and i’m glad but i really actually want to say it back and my role as watcher feels calcified as i become extremely perceptive to the micromovemwnts of my face
i want to speak but they get to speak now
i can’t take my eyes off of you
backing up to edges
allowing for ow ouch i’m stuck
slammed smashed squished up against
trying to be lines but the sweat is still there
baby pink walls smudged with hand prints and leg prints
can’t move a limb unless moved by another
contact often begins with a slap
moving kind of slapdash kind of falling kind of stumbling to get to the edges
This essay is a meditation on Chloë Engel and Anna Kroll’s collaborative imagination practice, and was first printed as an exhibition catalogue accompanying Anna Kroll’s MFA show at the University of Maryland. It was later published by The Brooklyn Rail in their September 2023 issue. Read a short excerpt below, and the full essay on The Brooklyn Rail’s website.
In The Room, we enter a realm of impossibility. Ears can catch fire, legs can be swings, and I can be a moth, crying at the funeral of a praying mantis. We build The Room ourselves. In it, impossible things become possible. We announce observations, movements, sensations, and decisions to each other. What is said is possible, plausible, done.
NORA RAINE THOMPSON 