I am uncovering parallels between the physical body, the mind, and the natural world through the medium of modern dance. As a professional environmental scientist, my choreographic interests lean toward ecology and environment, but I continue to feel led to make dances that have more to do with human nature and connection. For a while now, I’ve been obsessed with birds. My dance making process is based on reading, research, and reflection. My choreographic voice is still emerging and I’m planning to stay honest, challenge myself, and see where it goes.
My current exploration for Shared Spaces, coming up later this summer, is called Birdwoman (for now). Birdwoman is an abstract response to the autobiography, When Women Were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams. Actually, the piece is just a small slice. A sample.
After her mother’s death, Williams discovered that the journals her mother had left her were utterly blank. She saw her mother’s empty journals as “an interrogation” and as a gift. The shock manifests into a lifelong journey of self-discovery. Williams, in a sense, fills in the empty journals with her own stories and in doing so, invites the reader to participate in a collective contemplation of the blank slate and the power of voice, both its absence and presence.
If my mother had a mantra it was this: Trust your instincts. My instincts tell me my mother's journals are a mystery. My mother was a mystery. She loved making people think. My mother's journals make me think. And perhaps what looms largest in my mind now, what I could never have known as a woman in my 20s or even 30s, is that my mother left me her journals because she knew they would demand that I listen—carefully—to what is not being said, to what can never be said, only felt.
Williams’ book is a reflective search and remembrance of her mother, her upbringing in the Mormon faith, the deep influences of nature and birdsong, acts of defiance, both small and large, and the concept of women’s voices. In creating the piece, I meditated on the concepts of women, our shared mythology, flocks, voice, and the two sides of silence. The book feels like an echo chamber to my own thoughts about voice and silence. I'm incorporating moments of "absence" and stillness throughout the piece in response to these themes.
"To withhold words is power. But to share our words with others, openly and honestly, is also power."
"When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship."
I’ve also found poignant passages centered around the concept of community. The support and tension in our flock, so to speak, and the power of our shared history (both moments of subjugation and empowerment) as women. I've integrated moments of both shared expression (whether supportive or repressive) and personal expression throughout the piece.
"In a voiced community, we all flourish."
“The sin we commit against each other as women is lack of support. We hurt. We hurt each other. We hide. We project. We become mute or duplicitous, and we fester like boiling water until one day we erupt like a geyser. Do we forget we unravel in grief?”
"Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated."
I selected the piece of music, Birdwoman, by Poppy Ackroyd, not because of the title, but rather because the feeling that it was telling a secret and was meant to be listened to, again and again, like the pages of my well-worn copy of, When Women Were Birds. It starts so softly, you almost have to strain to hear it. It reminded me of Williams’ quote, “Word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper.” It was recorded with live sounds of birdsong at the beach, which was important to me.
My hope, is that I give the audience a view on the theme of voice (through dance) and the lack thereof, as well as a connection to bird song and the power of a flock.
To be honest, this process has been pretty self-indulgent, feeding my need for solo introspection and endless research. I know introspection is not a prism that produces good art. At the time of writing this entry, we have only 3 rehearsals left before the showing at Shared Spaces on August 3/4, so I need to stop the endless research and focus on just getting material set on the dancers. We've had two rehearsals so far and I'm feeling good about our progress. I just wish I had endless time to keep revising.
This piece is a toe dipped into the concept, not fully explored. I certainly haven’t completely immersed myself yet. I might decide to wade in completely, but I might also decide to walk away from it.
Comments