NORA RAINE THOMPSON

Category: Responding

  • Responding to Ashley R.T. Yergens at New York Live Arts

    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

  • Responding to Pep Talk (Marin Day and Maddie Hopfield) at Kestrels

    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

  • Responding to Stacy Grossfield at The Chocolate Factory

    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

  • Responding to ligia lewis at CARA

    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

  • Responding (notes app edition) to Faye Driscoll’s Weathering at New York Live Arts

    Images read:

    faye driscoll

    emily rose called it a pressure cooker

    a boiling pot of humanness with its skin
    folding mouth dripping lungs bellowing
    spiral fall spiral rise
    pushed along by stage managers
    managing the stage of course
    a snow globe of humanness with its heavy breathing treasure finding sucking spraying
    turning turning turning

    spray for us to keep us with them
    spray for us because we are them

    spinning and making a mess and stripping down and discarding and letting it go out
    splintering out into pieces
    weathering as in wearing down as in wears go down as in indents form as in evidence of movement as in desire lines as in people make peopled marks
    wet spots
    accidents
    falling watches
    falling

    stage managers no longer managing
    but director directing
    until the end of the world

    emily rose said i lost my breath when i saw the loss in his eyes

  • Responding (notes app edition) to Julia Antinozzi at The Judson Church

    Images read:

    a painting

    young small bodies shift in stutters
    model bodies that don’t make mistakes until
    they shake with the weight of time
    clothes that sit just right
    ah, there

    cold slab of marble with warm tea, steam
    take my picture i’ve made the frame
    sumptuous clarity steeping in her precisely dewy curls center part
    just a touch is all that’s needed
    for symmetry can balance and unbalance in ways that will make you feel like a king
    to spin with control

    is the drone the tyranny of ballets influence on their toes?
    spread and reaching,
    knobby knuckled babies ‘hands to the sky
    is that why the drone is beautiful and powerful and distant and close?
    is that why i feel suspicious?

    formalism, when it works, hits me like a cool breeze or cold water
    delicious yes
    but no
    rather
    the virtuousness of drinking a green smoothie
    subtle sweetness infused with the sharp delectable taste of catching the teachers eye
    swallow knowing you will be getting the A

    the consequences are yet to be understood
    in the meantime i eat clean
    chase alignment
    control the spin

  • Responding (notes app edition) to Stina Nyberg’s Make Hay While the Sun Shines and Sweet at PAGEANT

    Images read:

    stina nyberg

    may hay while the sun shines like a prelude
    to the big story of everything
    like remembering the future when
    humans are symbols of themselves
    humans are beautiful glitching action
    figures find pleasure in repetition
    mischievous concepts of selves

    sweet

    make hay while the sun shines makes more sense once the solo suite tells the big story of everything
    of a jacketasaurus, fuming, shining
    of the silly way humans ruined everything
    of the silly way humans will leave this earth,
    finally
    of the fun we had here –
    try to fly, trying to dance, trying to show our moms how high we can jump, trying to make eye contact, trying to exorcise demons, trying to slow down
    the big story is remembered, of course
    remembered into the past and into the inevitable ends that will let this place breathe again
    welcoming ends

  • Responding (notes app edition) to Audre Wirtanen , jaamil olawale kosoko, and Levi Gonzalez at The Judson Church

    Images read:

    audre
    tell the story with frankness
    of the devastatingly fucked up world
    this world where glitter and cake adorn slow violence that keeps us weary
    talking shit like it’s her job like her life depends on it like our lives depend on it
    because how else will we realized the magic trick that turns red to green and buries alarms under the plush covers

    body encased in sparkling air
    body swimming in puns that lighten the despair
    face smashed into lumps of sweetness
    frosting salted with tears
    it’s hard to breathe through a thick treat

    jaamil
    opulence reigns
    effigy remains
    ring light portends a reading for the fans
    video feed makes the fans
    pop star from afar makes an appearance for the fans

    a sermon spectacle delivered as
    conversation or
    let me just read this to you
    until we’re all saying amen
    until they are shining, even once derobed,
    placing the fringed gloves and the
    shimmering shift into the arms of a man in a suit

    levi
    hey hey hey hey i see you
    a child’s game of tag with voice
    an improv class’ game of contact with the
    hesitation and sludge of men knowing men
    is that what an old friendship among men looks like? pushing and pulling and reaching for somewhere to hold and saying sorry with a hand and aiming for a sturdy spot to lean on?

    later we’re alone with our skin
    playing examining experimenting with the soft flesh that men pretend they don’t have
    pink flushes the smooth
    pink betrays the heat, the liveness of his parts he manipulates like clay

    we’ll get dressed again after, slowly
    and look at each other again

  • Responding (notes app edition) to Tere O’Connors Rivulets

    Image reads:

    satisfying like drinking from a water fountain
    not all at once but also all at once
    unison can be hydrating
    butterfly sweat stains and
    bodies in a rorsharch test
    i guess i like a ballet formation
    i guess i like a ballet formation when i can unfocus my eyes and just get blurs off
    green and flat hands and body vibratto
    bodies in teres image teres eye’s making
    but less eerily thin than i remember the ballet formation
    bodies i recognize executing precisely

    i’m surprised they didn’t laugh more
    because pattering little hands in unison is just funny
    it tickles
    it is choreographing serendipity
    it is choreographing a giggle
    in all seriousness choreographing a chorus of giggles and patty cake
    tastes like the lick of water

  • Responding (notes app edition) to Christopher “Unpezverde” Nuñez’s The Circle or Prophetic Dream

    Image reads:

    technicolor billowed circles
    bodies bare and light ready
    bodies cloaked in relics in masks in tiny houses

    the twang of a jawbone being struck
    produces a twitch in my body
    a spasm like the memory of bone

    the slow fade the slow cresting wave
    the full full full silence in the dark
    oh how i love the moment before applause starts
    where we sit receiving the prophetic dream together

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