air plant

Humans dancing detail nature's abiding interest, and pleasure, in movement and vibration. I like to think of us as a evolutionary riff on epiphytes, those air plants that don't attach to soil - draw support from structures around them - and draw sustenance from the very air. Nature asks in its human experiment, "How many different kinds of movement, in how short a time, can we manage here? Let's dance!" But, really, no such thing as natural or "pedestrian" movement - a concept that some contemporary dancers, myself included, seem to like as a concept. Natural for whom? Under what emotional state? What time of the year? When was your last joy? When was your last pain? Who's moving through you? In this week's rite, it is 6:30 in the evening, still early spring, and Martha is moving through me on some errand into the maze. Theses overblown dramatic gestures seem very natural, in this moment.