NORA RAINE THOMPSON

Category: Responding

  • Responding to Hayley Stahl at Target Margin Theater

    How do you talk without seeing? Deadpan party chats
    How do you see yourself on stilts? Lift and turn and slowly scan
    How do you not look me in the eye? Stand, sit, come, go
    How was that? Rotating the miniscule until the subtle is choreographed

  • Responding to Miguel Gutierrez at New York Live Arts

    So much section and so much movement and so much nothing and so much almost the song you know from 2010 and so much step and so much routine and so much that it is a painting until so much turns them on each other but then back to so much movement and so much communal body and so much wiggling at the edges of my eyes and so much center and so much periphery (of course, super nothing, super charged with what we thought could be called nothing but it saturated with color), with a light show intermission

  • Responding to Ralph Lemon at MoMA PS1 (again)

    Flat splat white on yellow
    Simple dimple slow slow steady steady
    Fold and flipping absolutely out out out
    Piped in earbuds robot and little sweat spot
    No, sweat rainbow
    No, exam notes
    Intrinsically, it is AHHHHHHHHHHH, which is watching a dog watching a scream which is watching a scream sing, which is watching an outward force rush and gush

  • Responding to Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris at Chocolate Factory

    Citibike cruising
    They gossip on mic, recommending the latest adrienne maree brown
    Swinging sun and cloud across shoulders, like a bundle to run away with
    Caring for one another, actually
    Via baptism, putting the batteries back in, oiling up and partying down (“this is a party this is a party”)
    Shooting one out like pouring one out:
    for Moriah, for Judith, for equity, for Crackhead Barney
    for sincerity, for irony, for the bit, for the boys, for the community, actually

  • Responding to Amelia Heintzelman at PAGEANT

    Torsion
    Squeak squeeze
    Jump quick squat
    Opening for a breath
    Ah, space for a breath

  • Responding to Nora Alami at JACK

    Speed rituals
    To get mess to get clean
    To get shaken to shake
    To invite and offer to take take get get give give no wait

  • Responding to Ralph Lemon at MoMA PS1

    A slow long build
    A suite of songs
    Of turning around and not quite in view
    Prickling tingling legs or not legs
    Song song song
    Mommy mommy mommy
    With the forcefulness of a note child
    Dress up to rant again
    “This is what the funeral was like:” skipping
    Christening dance stage as danceable
    Contained skips and step step brush

    Write something and throw bricks at it
    Yell something and harmonica at it
    Sing something and scream at it
    Give us everything and smile at it

    Finalizing in the final scream
    That David couldn’t stay seated for

    And about that final scream
    It grew and grew past itself
    Flicked and flopped and sweat and pulled up took off stripped off
    Wanna go to the club to lose yourself
    As if to remember you’ve never been contained so well
    As if to remember why you can take on “the right to dance” and let it explode you
    Fury and ecstasy I think they called that section
    You/I write because they have a knack for making you feel the me could be you

  • Responding to Niall Jones at Danspace Project

    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

  • Responding to Ariel Lembeck at Kestrels

    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

  • Responding to Eiko Otake and Margaret Leng Tan at Greenwood Cemetery

    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

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