The Morning After

It's actually worse than a one night stand; however you feel about it, you have to get up and do it again - same people, same place, same time. Do over. Yes, a case of the post-performance jitters.

How'd it go? I dunno. No, really, I do not know. And truthfully, it doesn't matter; my attention can only be on the next performance and on my body. I should only focus on fulfilling the next performance. On stretching, moving, warming up. On figuring out if the pain is anything more than usual disability stuff. On discovering whether the ache is only soreness from the energy of a hard week and a hard performance or whether I might have a minimal strain. Last night, I was so zonked, I drifted off (a number of times) in the bath while waiting for my muscles to relax. I crawled into bed and put my heating pad on and awoke a couple of hours later to put my ice cuffs on. This morning, finally, I feel less drained.

In an earlier post on physically integrated dance, I wrote (many of you have seen this before, but stick with me for a sec: it really seems to be coming into its own):

PID is about the ways a dancer moves in his or her body and also about what I see as the positive effect it can have on the audience. It seems kind of cheap to say that I am looking for an integratedness as the effect of PID, but that is what stands out to me.

Too often, I think, you go to a dance performance and see bodies on the extreme doing extreme things. They can be very beautiful and very effective, but the usual dancer body tends to be if not alienating at least in a different world. You can marvel at it, enjoy it, be moved by it, but not necessarily own it in your own body. If you are not a dancer, you know that you could *never* do that.

I think the effects of the representations of the body we see in PID are very different. The movement that, for me, defines the genre communicates a certain awareness and acceptance of the body. I think it communicates a deep engagement with embodiment. By which I mean, an understanding of the reality of the body -- something I think that disabled dancers can really bring to the field. I also mean an engagement with the idea that we know, perceive, and learn through our bodies.

Not sure whether that's clear. For me, a successful PID performance has me admiring the aesthetics, yes. It has me appreciating the social value of dancing PWDs, yes. But it also brings about within me a deep sense of recognition of the power and potential of the body. It's an embracing of the body -- any body -- the fleshly body as a beautiful thing in itself.

This morning on the phone, a friend told me that as she left the theater she saw a bunch of people outside on the sidewalk and in the marquis area. She immediately recognized them as dancers: they were repeating some of what they had seen on stage in the performance. She saw them jumping, twisting, kicking and then talking with each other -- a quick conference and another one would leap into the air. When dancers want to dance what they've just seen ...

My friend also wanted to leave me with the image of a disabled member of the audience, also moving gently in her chair as she talked about the power and effect of the performance on her. When non dancers want to become dancers ....

I feel really emotional about all of this. Something is happening that I have yet to understand.