Blast Off
Dreaming up a year long road trip has been a wild undertaking. At any given moment, I feel simultaneously “on track” (whatever that means when there is no track to be had), lost in the ether, wildly under prepared, excitedly unsure of everything, and confidently ready to dive into this next adventure. We are improvisers living in an improvised time. To leave now feels right even though so much has changed.
Houston, we have a problem.
Houston, we have another problem.
Houston, never mind, we’re actually deeply interested in problems and how to solve them; you can sit this one out.
In our original planning, we envisioned this tour to be one largely guided by in-person teaching opportunities, Contact Improvisation events, and chances to perform a new work. Of course, things have shifted significantly. With many teaching jobs in precarious positions (shout out to all of you amazing educators making full year adjustments for yourselves and your students), studios closed for rentals, and CI largely non-existent, we’ve had ample opportunity to call upon the skills of redirection and immediate composition.
We are still honing our dance making practice and leaning in to what it means to do that as a duo rather than individually or as members of a larger ensemble. We’re testing our bodies and figuring out what we can train them to do or, otherwise, train them out of. Spending five months dancing on hardwood floors or outdoors has all but freed us from our need for a studio which feels liberating on a number of fronts, though we definitely miss moving with our friends.
More than anything else, we are learning to recenter our focus on humanity and what it means to embrace a constant state of uncovering. Bodies it, turns out are stunning microcosms. They hold not only movement, but also ideas, attempts, failures, triumphs, traumas, memory, and malleability. There is a constant churning. Whip together the eddies of experience and watch patterns develop, processes emerge. Processes love continuance.
How long can a body in motion, stay in motion?
Time will tell.
Here we go.