my battery is pure love

In a Butoh workshop a couple of weeks ago I was reminded of dancing at Phil's and Club Abstract in Waterloo during my university days. About how I learned more about myself as a dancer on their checkered dance floors than I did in the studios sweating and crying my way through ballet classes. (Might sound weird to be reminded of this in a Butoh workshop, but maybe not so if you've ever taken a workshop with Denise Fujiwara/Fujiwara Dance Inventions). So viscerally I remembered how I used to feel dancing. It was all simmering and I was on the verge of art, of making real art for the first time. Some voice was at the cusp of me. Or I was at the cusp of my own voice. I was totally unconfident but I still felt promise and belief stronger than insecurity. Shadows came in. People close to me died. I moved to Toronto. I lived with my best friend from high school who, for me, was a swirling cloud of everything I was not and thought I wanted to be. I started in the Professional Program...

drip drip drip cells escape flying over their aerial tricks of sonic dulce adagio, legato...hidden beneath sudden hits the pulse that no longer sparks in my belly just phantom limbs twitching if i could turn the corners of my eyes upwards, slightly fill impossible vales, crevices with good humour ---ah but there's always beauty een in the shadows and cracks--- what i cannot face settles in the pit of my stomach as home and hearth here. here. here. here. here. 5 steps more the heart stops she learned that move in the mountains over blistered fingers she -- heroine of cinema alone in a box in a box in a box projected on a 2 dimensional box geometry confounds soars the architecture of my soul seems limited by the skeleton it cannot imagine as my breath can. what age was she when the cells rained down in cantankerous form? are we there yet? possessed of pen of heart of m...

Well, the inevitable happened. I've been told it happens to every baby....he fell off the bed in the hotel. I've heard stories of falling off beds, change tables, down stairs while strapped into a stroller, but it still didn't stop my breath from being taken away as I saw his little face as he went down. We are now in week two of the tour, on Salt Spring Island in the beautiful Salt Spring Inn. Pablo was playing with my copy of the Dance Current magazine and got excited while I brushed my teeth at the sink next to him, watching him in the mirror. In the blink of an eye, over he went. I caught him before he made complete impact with the floor. My stomach and intestines have not settled, even though he cried for just a few minutes and has been in a good mood for most of the rest of the day. I can't believe it happened. He fell. I could not stop it. I'm not sure I'm prepared for what is going to happen for the rest of my life with Pablo. I refuse to believe I'm...

I love flying. I love the surge of take off and the expectation of the wheels touching down. I love looking at the pattern of 'civilization' and nature from way up. I love being reminded of the similarity between the patterns we build and the patterns nature builds -- we are made of her. I am taking off from Toronto, flying to Calgary for a brief stopover and then on to Kelowna with Theatre Rusticle -- touring "April 14, 1912", the show in which I play the Titanic. It is one my favourite things to perform, because the team involved is brilliant on every level, because there is no phoning it in. If you do, the whole show sinks -- and not the good way. I have my baby in my arms and my amazing husband in the seat next -- he has taken two weeks off work to come along so that we can all be together. I am suddenly not so thrilled to fly. I am excited by the idea that Pablo gets to fly, see mountains and ocean before he is a year old, that Dennes and I are continuing to do t...

I am sitting at my dining room table staring out at my new view -- a large oak tree between me and a park where dogs run like wild horses. Baby sleeps in my lap. He has just started to crawl this week and in his incredible mobility he is napping better and sleeping through the night once again. The trouble we left behind by moving at the beginning of the month seem to have cleared his little mind. Tonight is the opening performance of Theatre Rusticle's new production, Birnam Wood. It is the most extraordinary thing I've been part of as an artist. Perhaps even surpassing the experience of working on April 14, 1912 with Theatre Rusticle (the company's previous production). The most freedom, the most precision, the most play, the greatest number of multiple realities channelling through our performer bodies. Big challenge. (Runs March 18-27th at Theatre Passe-Muraille www.theatrerusticle.org) And of course that once-banished part of my psyche -- her name is Insecurity -- ha...

My first proper show since Pablo was born. Luckily I was too tired to get exceedingly nervous -- will people be comparing my dancing, my body, my ideas to pre-baby times? Am I delusional in my sense that my body is looser and psychically more open now that baby is here? and the classic: am I delusional in trying to be a dancer in the first place. My husband is extremely tired of this last question. It is the evil twin of the good question that keeps one honest as a dancer: Why am I doing this? But not asked in a desperate or cynical tone, instead from the standpoint of curiosity. Why am I doing this? Why does this dance need to exist? Why do I need to dance it? After reading a lot of Einstein and Bergson in the last couple of years I am of the opinion that not much exists on this planet that does not have need to be there. Nature is very economical and practical in its creativity. Man pushes towards excess and production. So I stepped on stage in the post-partum era. I walked as a stra...