Comet

Madeline has lived in Berlin for over a year now, but I still haven't gotten over the shock and pleasure of seeing her - suddenly, on a day's notice -  standing in front of me.   

I moved to Germany 3 years ago, and at first the awareness of being a continent away from my family was pretty much constant.  In the US, I'd always felt that tiny invisible threads connected me to everyone I loved, no matter where we all lived.  All I had to do was tug one of the threads, and that person would respond.  Or the other way around.  On the day my grandmother died, I was working my desk job at J.  I was the receptionist; my job was to answer the phones.  I answered and it was my father, calling to tell me about the accident.  

Sometimes I can't find the threads at all anymore.  They're still there, but they're buried under calculations of time-zones, work schedules, empty phone cards and warbling Skype connections.  I have to actually hear my cell phone when it rings, which most of the time it doesn't because I'm in a theater; I have to get the message from my home machine, which most of the time I don't because I don't understand the German directions on how to re-set the damned thing; I have to read the email, which arrives when I'm sleeping and by the time I wake up what if it's too late.   I worry about the threads.  I imagine my father trying to track down the number at the theater, and wonder how he would communicate with the German receptionist, and how she would find me in the maze of the theater, and what if I was on my lunch break?

As I came out into the lobby after the premiere Saturday, I saw Madeline right away and walked straight over to her.  She was talking to Fred in the beautiful wedding tie and Jens, back from Berlin, and Roland, spiffy in his sweater, who came straight from a job in Frankfurt.  I stood behind her for a moment - she hadn't seen me yet - just long enough to hear her say,  "It smells like Li.." and as she said my name she turned around, and there I was.  

We had 20 hours.  We had drinks.  We woke up and talked about the dances, about the art gallery, about the elephants Roland is building for the circus, about Fred's eternal search for chairs for his classroom...  

We had coffees.  We had brunch and Roland made a comet on the restaurant table and we took photos 

and we kissed each other a lot.  I couldn't get over it.  She was right there in front of me.  

Bear-Girl-King + reinhardswald

Here they are, peeps...the first photos of the 2 pieces that premiere tomorrow. Send your toi-toi-tois, your break a legs and your merdes our way.  It's all going down at 19:30 kassel time.

The evening opens with Bear-Girl-King, by our Israeli guest choreographers, where everyone is masked by black full body unitards, united by movement rituals and disembodied sounds.   

A girl emerges from the group...  

as does a bear... 

and eventually, a king.

The evening continues with reinhardswald, the title of which comes from the famous woods near Kassel which inspired the Brothers Grimm for many of their fairy tales.   It's an anti-hero's tale, the story of the wolf.

But is he really a wolf, or just a child trying to get what he wants? 

How far do his fantasies take him? 

And what exactly happened to him when he went into the woods, all alone?  

Reclamation projects

This week, in addition to moving ahead with some new writing, submitting finished poems to magazines, and putting my notebook project to bed, I decided to gather all the poems that I have cut from my manuscript over the last couple years. I figured I would pull this little batch of near-poems together, take another look at them, see if there were poems (or parts) that I could improve/salvage/finally euthanize. Good thing to do with the time over Christmas. My thinking was that maybe after coming close a couple times this year, there might be something already lying around that, with some tinkering, could help put my manuscript over the top in 2010.



I didn't realize there were going to be an additional 80 pages of work... it's like the book behind the book.

Yesterday I pulled out the red pen and dug in, not trying to fix things yet, more seeing whether, with a bit of distance from them, I could more easily identify the problems/shortcomings of the poems.



Sometimes the problem is getting into (or out of) the poems. Beginnings and endings.



Sometimes a poem doesn't know what it wants to be, or how it wants to be.



Sometimes I don't know what to do, or even what's there... I just know something's wonky.



Some poems have hokey conceits, or deep-seated problems that aren't really fixable. At times you have to cut your losses. The only option left is to sell it for scrap. Hopefully the scraps will help another poem that hasn't been realized yet.

Though I'm only about a third of the way through the stack, I'm happy to note that there have also been a few poems which I think are finished, and solid. They may not make their way back into what I'm assembling as a manuscript now, but they might be the start of the next thing...

Now you're my ex girl and I'm out with the next girl

When Fred said yesterday it's been raining a lot in the past month in Kassel and I disagreed, I realized how little I've been outside in the past month.  Been spending the days in darkness, on stages, where it's always dry.  

Danced three pieces in four theaters this month, most recently in Bielefeld on Tuesday.  RM and I flashed back for a sec, performing an excerpt of ...raus bist du! in a gala. We were one of a handful of companies from around Germany to perform that evening in a beautiful old theater, and the only ones with pink feathers.  While jw and thorsten packed the pillow, michael made the lighting magic happen, and then it was showtime. RM did some back-flips and I rocked the bow one more time.

But now, as Gang Starr famously rapped, it's on to the next girl.  Reinhardswald, our new piece, premieres in one week.   Here's a glimpse of the paper room as it looks after the piece is finished.  Look closely and you'll see the forest revealed in the back corner, the idea for which we dreamed up in the back seat of a van driving through Poland at 11 at night a few weeks ago.

if there's a skeleton in your closet...

it looks like these...

when I last left you, Lily had arrived in Berlin to take us out to dinner...



Jose & Meri kept it lively, as always...





We went to check out "Africa's... er... The World's best new band" - who I've been waiting to see since KR emailed me a demo a couple years ago... File under: "I celebrate their entire catalog."



Of course they KILLED IT. They're really good live...

Post-show, Lily charmed her way backstage and told the guys to meet us out front. Lindani brought the modified Southafrican gas face to Berlin...



Jose copped a CD from Molefi. I was salty, knowing these aren't for turntables...



Hours of hi-jinks, including a broken bottle of whiskey in the lobby of the theater, an appearance by Madeline and Roland, and other delights, ensued.

We had an excuse... it was Tshepang's birthday! Line up, ladies! (Tshepang somehow escaped the camera all night... or he's a vampire... hmmm... I don't think anyone's ever seen him in daylight...)



You've been warned... next time these guys are in your area, you'd better be there...



"you're gonna know Blk Jks... You're gonna know South Africa..."

Gimme your jewels

Ten days till premiere in Kassel: two pieces, one by jw and one by Israeli choreographers Y and O.

You've already seen a glimpse of the paper room for Johannes's piece. Here's a sneak preview from the other one, in which we wear - oh, yes - full body unitards. It's actually quite fun, aside from the breathing part.

Here Ryan and Farley pretend, at my request, to be jewel theives. Suffice it to say I was inspired by the dramatic final scene in the Chabon novel I just finished. And the unitards.

More trains,

more train stations, 

more churches out the window, 

more theaters, 

more costume fittings,

more getting ready to dance, and then

more dancing.