stumbling up the stairs

I literally tripped up the stairs of the 42 Quebec Street studios, and then laughed. A welcome reminder to slow down and not rush through the next three hours. Day one of my artistic residency with Guelph Dance would only be as significant as my commitment to it.

It was a return to a familiar place. A tiny piece of geography that, for me, has held two decades of community gathering, sweating, observing, learning, thinking and moving. But I was different. My body carried a combination of curiosity and fear that I have felt before, but not like this. Can I still dance? What does my body remember? Do I have anything of substance to say? And perhaps the most challenging question, what value can solo work offer to community?

What I appreciate the most in the framing of this residency is the openness with which it is offered. A rare thing indeed. Not overdetermined, and not focused on a specific kind of product.

So then, it is up to me (nervous sigh).

I’ve been really good, most of my life, at doing what I was told to do. Especially in dance. And that got wrapped up in my sense of worthiness. So now the unraveling of that, slowly, through a practice of improvisation. Invention. Trying. Listening.

So what first?

Big ideas swirling from an ambitious proposal (more on that later), and a stiff, tired, uncertain body. In turning to my journal, an agreement bubbled up from within. “Welcome movement back. Be honest.”

My observations gave me valuable information. “No music, just seconds ticking. Go to floor and intuition. Follow impulse. Bounce, twist, lay, breath, quieting, gentle face, swing, momentum, fall…”

The silence was anything but silent. Each pop of the neck and crack of the hip, every groan and sigh, an audible expression of months of digital meetings, parenting pressures, remote teaching, and suspension of shared studio time — a bodily account of pandemic adaptation. How thrilling, though, to be able to trust my body to remember the physical pathways of ease, momentum and joy.

What a thing, also, to be witnessed in this moment. Another gift — the skilled and patient, Dan Charlebois, present to video-document my process as part of the residency. His questions and invitations only deepened the experience and inspired a sequence of movement experiments that I may not have attempted alone. His observation, after my improvisation to some favourite songs (on repeat since 2008), was that of a changed aura. And that is the magic of dance. A transformed and powerful state, even if only for a short time.

The emotional content of what I have proposed to explore through dance will require a body that is strong, responsive, and resilient. So that is where I begin — preparing for physical research that critically engages with my observations of cultural truths and challenges.