my battery is pure love

Over the past ten years, I have enjoyed interviewing artists and scientists so much that I have not dedicated much of this blog specifically to my own writing. I used to write quite a bit. I wrote and performed my own music at places like Graffitis and the Freetimes Cafe. I wrote poetry and short stories. Sometimes I was published. Like many people right now, I have had a lot of time and space to reflect. I have been writing again. This poem started as a brainstorm for a new solo dance I am creating and its title is a nod to Rainer Maria Rilke. I also acknowledge the soft, Irish nudge of the late John O'Donohue. **** Lucy Rupert in dead reckoning, 2016 photo by Omer Yukseker standing on fishes a fence of slippery parts snaps into shape flat instant grounding             made of lost ideas, the things that don't tether       while soles hang on. the dancer        hard-worked these 25 years  ...

INTERVIEW WITH PETER CHIN OCTOBER 2019 written and compiled by Lucy Rupert Peter Chin at Pre Rup temple while making dance film (2020) Peter Chin, artistic director of Tribal Crackling Wind, dancer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist, has been splitting his time between Canada and Cambodia for many years. Currently he is developing a new performance work “Trillionth I”, with dancers and musicians from Cambodia, Canada, Mexico and Italy. “Trillionth I” embodies subtle influences of community hopes and fears to reveal the universal energy between us all, and the healing that is possible through transmission of that energy in live performance. Last summer Tribal Crackling Wind performed excerpts in Allen Gardens and in the fall, performed excerpts of the work in a presenters’ showcase at Fall For Dance North, and as part of Nuit Blanche, outside the Royal Ontario Museum. Although “Trillionth I"  lost its planned trajectory due to the global pandemic, the w...

I subscribe to Dance Magazine, the hard copy that comes in the mail. It is often a slim volume with beginnings of ideas that they delve into more deeply on their website, and many of the articles are aimed at students or young professional artists. Still I love it, because I learn a bit about commercial dance, and Broadway shows, health insurance and wage issues in the United States and, each month, what drives a particular creator or dancer. Adeene Denton's short but compelling profile in a recent article about science and dance hovered off the page for me. A planetary geologist who is also a choreographer? I contacted her immediately to be part of my Art + Science interviews. We spoke via Zoom in March 2020, during the early days of lockdown/social distancing/pandemic and it was an excellent way to launch into a startling and galvanizing stage for North America and far beyond. Conversations like these -- though not broaching head-on the concerns of pandemics and the amazing...