Category: My Blog

The first thing we see is the board. A black rectangle, held at chest height, its edges slightly rounded, the way a mugshot slate sits in the hands of someone who has been told where to put them. Above it, in a plain sans-serif, the words GOT TOO SILLY. Below it, a white bird —… Continue reading The Mugshot Board and the Bird: Reading the Got Too Silly Shirt

The first thing we see is not the cat. It is the word GREETINGS, arched across the top of the print in blue-purple letters that appear to stand up from the fabric, each one given a bevel and a shadow so that the greeting arrives before the animal does. Below it, HUZZ sits in the… Continue reading The Deadpan Cat and the Dimensional H: Reading the Greetings Huzz Shirt

The document, not the legend There is a temptation, when writing about somatic training, to begin with an atmosphere: the softened room, the lowered voice, the student lying on a wooden floor with eyes closed. That atmosphere is real, but it is not evidence. The evidence for what a technique claims is in its documents.… Continue reading Imagery Before Muscle: What Joan Skinner’s Releasing Technique Actually Argued About Dance Training

The orange face is not symmetrical. One eye is a closed crescent — a wink, the lid pressed down like a comma — and the other is a wide, open triangle. Between them, a small triangular nose. Below, a mouth that is mostly a grin but not a clean one: the tongue lolls out to… Continue reading The Wink and the Tongue: Reading the Goofy Jack-O-Lantern Shirt as a Costume of Comic Timing

The mouth is the first thing I see. Not the orange, which is a flat, unmodulated pumpkin orange, closer to a traffic cone than to any gourd I have ever carved. Not the triangular eyes, which are almost friendly in their symmetry. The mouth: a jagged line of cutouts, each tooth a sharp wedge, the… Continue reading The Jagged Mouth: Reading the Scary Jack-O-Lantern Face Shirt as a Costume of Refusal

The floor is the first thing a dancer negotiates and the last thing anyone credits. It arrives before the music, before the mirror, before the barre. It is there in the warm-up and there in the bow. And yet in most writing about dance it disappears into the phrase “the stage” — a neutral given,… Continue reading The Sprung Floor as Choreographic Apparatus: How the Surface Underfoot Decides What Movement Is Possible

The first thing I see is not the dog. It is the shadow. A black wolf-shaped silhouette, taller than the brick wall behind it, looms over a small tan chihuahua in red boxing gloves. The chihuahua stands in a boxer’s stance, paws up, facing forward. The wolf does not face forward. It rises behind the… Continue reading The Wolf Behind the Chihuahua: Reading the Shadow on the I Got That Dog In Me Shirt