Marlon Pelayo
Derek Schiesel
ask kitty
Vol 7
Lesley B., Pasadena, CA
What do you miss most about being a choreographer and not being able to be hands on during COVID?
Dear Lesley,
What I miss most is the unique way that dancers communicate with one another. I thought the longing for this might dissipate over time but it’s only growing and growing and growing within me. If I happen to see a dancer in the new ‘real’ world it takes all of my strength not to run and throw myself onto them. I want to feel them and ‘speak’ to them through my body, feel their heart beating along with my own. This sounds like madness - I know - but we are tactile folks.
I’m finding it very hard to write about the other way we communicate. An exchange of information that is meditative, dialectic. I miss ‘speaking’ to dancers - again struggling to use words to describe this - and having their response come back to me clearly without a single word having been uttered. This conversation is silent - remote and within at the same time. Exchanging movement is delicious and grounds me. Watching the person inhabit that movement with their thoughts and their spirit, sending it back to me permeated with their intent, is the ultimate fulfillment. I miss that.
My current experiment is sending out a prompt, a piece of music, and receiving and sharing improvisational movement in exhange. I’ll let Marlon Pelayo, Derek Schiesel and Russell Ridgeway speak to us all.
Dialectic
a
: any systematic reasoning, exposition or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict : a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth
b
: an intellectual exchange of ideas
Merriam-Webster
Stay Well,
Kitty