Two curved lashes, one per eye, sit above the triangular cutouts of an orange jack-o’-lantern face. The mouth is a smile — not a grin with teeth, not a jagged grimace, just a smile. The graphic is orange, the face is carved, and the eyelashes are the whole argument. I want to sit with that… Continue reading The Eyelashes on the Jack-o’-Lantern: Reading a Carved Face That Looks Back
The Salted Stick: Reading the Butter Costume’s Vertical Label
The first thing I notice is the blue. Not a dairy blue, not a sky blue, but the blue of a wrapper — the specific, slightly chalky blue that packaging designers use when they want you to know a thing is processed. It runs vertically down the center of the graphic, stacked in capitals: SALTED… Continue reading The Salted Stick: Reading the Butter Costume’s Vertical Label
The Répétiteur: When the Score Is a Person
In a studio at École supérieure de ballet du Québec, Joysanne Sidimus is staging the first movement of Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco. A student drifts toward the phrase shape of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, following the melody the way a dancer trained on musicality might. Sidimus stops her. “Don’t listen to the music.… Continue reading The Répétiteur: When the Score Is a Person
The Arrow Points Left: Reading the Tweedle Dee Half of a Paired Costume
An arrow points left. Above it, in letters that look like they were cut from a carnival sign and shaken loose, the words TWEEDLE DEE sit stacked over I’M WITH DUM. The arrow is not decorative. It is a grammatical instruction: the body wearing this shirt is the referent, and the partner is somewhere off… Continue reading The Arrow Points Left: Reading the Tweedle Dee Half of a Paired Costume
The Jam: Contact Improvisation’s Ungoverned Institution and the Politics of Who Touches Whom
On a Tuesday night in a church basement in any mid-sized city, a dozen people take off their shoes and stand in a circle. Someone says, “We’ll start with a warm-up, then open jam.” There is no teacher, no choreography, no membership card. Two hours later, strangers have rolled across each other’s backs, held each… Continue reading The Jam: Contact Improvisation’s Ungoverned Institution and the Politics of Who Touches Whom
How the Demand to Title a Work Before It Exists Deforms What the Work Can Become
The deadline is Tuesday. The studio in Brussels smells like rosin and the particular staleness of a room that has been closed over the weekend. Monday afternoon. The choreographer — let us call her M — sits on the floor with her laptop open, her back against the wall, her left knee bent at an… Continue reading How the Demand to Title a Work Before It Exists Deforms What the Work Can Become
How the Body Carries Political Meaning Even in Abstract Movement
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