errata

counting down to the solstice, i realized there must be an error in the number of dances left. i looked closely and found that i had repeated dance #35 on two consecutive days. i got back on the right count accidentally when i skipped dance #179. more recently, i skipped dance #344. i fixed that error, and am now on the proper count. the solstice is december 21. on that day i will have danced 366 dances. wow!

dance #349, to be straight with you

Friday December 4, 2009

To be straight with you

9:15 p.m. DV8 performs at the Fleck Dance Theatre. Homophobia unleashed on stage. A dancing ethnographic record thick with the voices of people struggling to find ways to speak their hate, their pain, their hurt and loss. Sex and race and class and sexuality and religion tangled so tight there’s no breaking free. Such a powerful performance. The final scene a dancer speaks as a Muslim man torn between his homosexuality and his God. He raises his hands up, palms, fists, shaking. “It is between me and my God” he says, his head shaking with such intensity that there is a blur. He becomes Janus-faced, looking both directions simultaneously. His hands shaking with such intensity they paint the space around him in a blur of flesh against the blackening stage. Lights fall until all that is left is the blurred image of head and hands shaking. Caught in between. The day was cool, crisp. Cold settling in. There was no snow in Toronto this November. The first time in 162 years.

dance #348, finding the dance

Thursday December 3, 2009

Finding the dance

10:30-11:30 p.m. Body re-members how to move. Far flung limbs. Graceful lines arc-ing. Sweeps of arm, neck  heels. Legs rotate in sockets. Sweeping. Floor widens as I move across. Bones reworking lines. I pick up the pencil to draw. Lines dart out. Hard and swift. Wrists flying. Pencil scratching, catching the surface of the page. Pressure and release ripple out of me. I let the pencil go and lean into the movement. Fast and full. The line articulates something at first elusive. I sit with it for a moment then recognize a trace of the movement. Is this an inscription that records the dance or does it create the dance? In some ways I recognize the dance in the drawing. In other ways the drawing seems to instruct me how to remember the dance. Overwriting and prescribing what will be re-membered. It was a soft December day. Warm with a bit of sun and a lot of cloud. Sirens fill the night. The clock tower chimed eleven.

dance #347, ode to my suit

Wednesday December 2, 2009

Ode to my suit

9:00 – 9:30 p.m. Improvisations with the Second Floor Collective in a tiny studio at the JCC. White sheets torn into rectangles of different sizes are laid out across the floor. They become surfaces, canvases, textures, and objects for improvisation. We rotate. Each of us reads Neruda’s poem “Ode to my suit”. Dances among the others play out. Slides. Switches. Swerves. My body aware. Sensing into a space filling up with improvised encounters. Moving with. Finding clarity. The rain came down hard tonight. Alice is still away. The whole house misses her.

dance #346, weak

Tuesday December 1, 2009

Weak

11:30 p.m. Body spent after last night’s illness. The dance my weighted body listing in bed. Still swerving. D reads to me from Cabinet magazine. I tune into his voice as he reads, feeling the vibrations through my sensitized tissues.

dance #345, burdock

Monday November 30, 2009

Burdock

1 p.m.- 4 a.m. The headache settled in around 1 p.m. And it just escalated. Swerving sickness in my head. Pounding. Deep. I visualize pulling layers of the fascia around my skull away. Ripping open this seething mass. I drank too much burdock tea and it feels like every molecule of toxin in my body has been mobilized. I’m sea sick inside. I can barely hold the pencil to draw. The dance is the pain. Alice is still away and I miss her.

dance #344, calendula blooming

Sunday November 29, 2009

Calendula blooming

9:00 p.m. Sipping tea while I brew a new batch. I scoop up a large handful of herbs: calendula, red clover, St John’s Wort, blue vervain, raspberry leaf, oat straw, and lemon balm. I’m holding fields of this summer’s flowers in my hands. It’s the yellow petals that catch my eye. I discovered my calendula is still blooming. Late November bursts of bright orange, turgid and waxy. Beaming through these grey days. I visit the flowers tonight, after the rain, bending over to take them in. One flower is spent, one in full bloom, and another just unfolding. I will have to harvest them tomorrow before the frost comes. The dance is in my study. Shivering up from the root. Arms swinging wide, palms swooping. Circling hips, spiraling upward. Energy rises up. Feels as if a sphere of light engulfs heart and head and the space around me. The day was cool. The wet night shivers.

dance #343, sunset from the sky

Saturday November 28, 2009

Sunset from the sky

5:30 p.m. Sunset over Toronto. The left wing of the plane dips to reveal a magnificent sunset. Red, orange, and blues. It was rain-filled for the past 4 days. This break of blue sky above the clouds is joyful. Fiery. I savour the moment, leaning across D’s body sitting next to me to hold my gaze fast on this brilliance. Heading home from Amherst. Alice comes home soon, too.

dance #342, emily dickinson’s humming-bird

Friday November 27, 2009

The Humming-bird
by Emily Dickinson

A route of evanescence
With a revolving wheel;
A resonance of emerald,
A rush of cochineal;
And every blossom on the bush
Adjusts its tumbled head, –
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy morning’s ride.

9:30 p.m. Lynn recites Emily Dickinson’s poems. We are next to Emily’s house in Amherst, and today we visited the Dickinson Homestead and the house next door where Emily’s family lived. Lynn recites several poems over the course of the day. The dance is her poised by the fireplace, eyes aflame and intense. She recites a poem about a hummingbird. Emerald resonances. Lynn’s body and mouth and eyes a conduit for the words. The poem rises up from deep inside her bones. The day was filled with rain and cold.

dance #341, feasting

Thursday November 26, 2009

Feasting

6:30 p.m. Tucking into a massive meal after a long sedentary day. The food warms my chilled limbs. The dance this lounging and feeding. My belly expanding. Sedated by potatoes and squash and beets and cleriac. Smooth and cream foods. Long walk with Menina, the Irish wolfhound after dinner through Amherst College grounds. The night air is clearing. It is American Thanksgiving.