virtuosity, sureness. . . creation

 

Winter Dance Concert, 1/26

Dancers,

the virtuosity and sureness of your dances

filled the PAC with power and joy,

as usual for me, a creature of words,

I savored the movement, the stasis, the gestalt,

but translating it into words seemed almost sacrilegious,

here it goes, anyway.

As I focus hard on the dances,

I notice:

energetic movement followed by moments of set pose,

frozen as if captured in a photograph,

then fast elaborate movement to the next pause, the next tableau,

each individual is an individual,

and also is newly created in relationship to others in groups,

who shift as the need of the story shifts,

there are physical cubes of many color 

who are also part of the story,

as well as words and moving images

projected onto the screen behind the dancers,

light and dark are both actors on the stage,

all as intentional as every dancer's movement,

I laugh, I cry, I am moved,

I have long figured that there are subtleties in what is "said,"

that I have to trust my intuition to hear,

I am sure the choreographers used words

in the creation of the movements, music, 

and symbolic words before me,

retranslating back is hard,

the cell phone dance spoke in language I understood

but even it had subtleties beyond what I can put into words,

I loved how well your lights shone,

and I will keep working on learning 

to hear and understand the language you use,

for now what I can say is "Bravo!"

we need the arts to expand us

so that we can joy more fully

in what we can create

upon the background the universe allows us to share.

Thank you for your creations.

by Henry H. Walker

January 15, ‘25