Author Archives: Paula Josa-Jones

Oct4

wedding bliss

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I took a brief blog break because I went to my nephew’s wedding in Barbados.  It was an utterly beautiful time.  Over sixty friends and family had flown there to celebrate.  I was skeptical about a destination wedding, but the lovely unexpected thing is that we had several days before the wedding to hang out, get to know each other, and create a little community of support for the couple.  So rather than a group of relative strangers coming together, we were a Bajan-infused, sun-drenched, sea-blessed group of celebrants.

A lot of my work is quiet, solitary and relatively unscheduled.  I am not particularly a group activity kind of person. The exception is my performance life which involves hopefully large audiences and a lot of group collaboration.   But that is  my gig and I get to direct it, and for the most part call the shots.  So I had to stretch myself a bit to participate in a series of group events with people I did not know.

The best one was going to the busy Barbadian town of Oistins on a Friday night for a fish dinner.  It was loud, crowded, chaotic.  Not my scene, but I ended up in a wild dance with one of the locals to ear-splitting reggae music nontheless.  I don’t drink.  Haven’t had a drink for 33 years.  But I discovered that I can definitely still party.

But the real reason we were all gathered into this little temporary community was to celebrate love.  Andy and Julia chose this beautiful reading from Corelli’s Mandolin:

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

And oh, the happy couple!

 

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Sep25

see you soon

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I will be away for the next several days.  My nephew is getting married in Barbados. At first I wasn’t going to go.  It seemed like an impossible extravagance, which I ultimately decided was a good reason to go.  Plus, it’s family.  That’s what my brother-in-law, the very busy lawyer said when he dropped his schedule to come to my daughter’s hastily arranged wedding this summer.  “It’s family.”  So Pam and I will be there.

Also, this is balm for the part of me that hates seeing the end of summer, of swimming, of t-shirts and early morning tea on the terrace.  I am not a big fan of season change.  I know that is blasphemous to hard core Northeasterners.  I grew up in Minnesota, so I know from season change.  What I want is the politics and culture of the Northeast and the climate of St. Barth.  Oh well.  So this let’s me have a little moment of reprieve.  Bare feet, warm water.  See you next week!

 

Sep25

living a moving life

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You may have noticed that I have changed the name of the blog to Paula Josa-Jones/ride dance write.  The “sub-title” is “living a moving life.”  I needed to broaden the scope of the title to include my three “big rocks.”

I am focused on the dance part at the moment. After seeing Soledad Barrio at the Joyce, I bought tickets to see Crystal Pite’s brilliant company Kidd Pivot in December.

But that is not the real story. The real story is that in this video of Crystal Pite improvising by Brian Johnson and in the poem that follows (thank you to the Writer’s Almanac) are two of the reasons that I want to live to ninety.  Movement that is common and uncommon. Both ravishing. Both essential.  It’s about living a moving life, living wide awake, riding the moment.  Start that now.

 

To Ninety

A city sparrow
touches down
on a bare branch

in the fork of a tree
through whose arms
the snow is sifting —

swipes his beak
against wood, this side
then that,

and flies away:
what sight
could be more common?

Yet I think
for such sights alone
I would live to ninety.

“To Ninety” by Robyn Sarah, from Questions About the Stars. © Brick Books, 1998. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

from cinematographer Brian Johnson:  I was commissioned by Knowledge Network in 2009 to create 19 short pieces in collaboration with the same number of artists across BC. These were then assembled into a kind of cultural survey of the province – mapping the diversity of those who live and create here. It can be seen in its entirety on the Knowledge website.

http://www.knowledge.ca/program/cartographies

Sep23

Soledad the Splendid

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On Saturday we went into the city with our dancer daughter to see Soledad Barrio and her company Noche Flamenco at the Joyce Theater.  I do not remember ever being so electrified by a performance or a performer.  The video barely hints at the power of this woman and her company.

I already feel myself to be Spanish (I am not) and a gypsy (I am not).  I have two Spanish horses and a Spanish dog.  I love the Spanish language.  I love Spain – the people, the animals, the warmth, the cafe con leche, the culture.  So seeing Soledad was like a divine intervention.  She is a dance shaman, a woman who changes the molecular structure of the air around her, who tangles us in an irresistible web of rhythm and shape.  I can’t wait to see her again!

I have to share Alistair MacCauley’s description in the New York Times, September 2011:

The many kinds of rhythmic footwork, all glorious, that occur during the solo — cascades, crescendos, accelerations and decelerations — are all part of one concentrated stream of consciousness. She is often still, but her stillness is always a preparation, a display of brimming intensity. Effects that have been electrifying in the past — sudden off-balance pivots on the spot where she then returns to a point of focus as if to a psychological fixation or freezes in powerfully back-bent positions — still occur brilliantly, but like passing moments amid a larger and consuming thought.
That thought continually moves on. While framing her face gorgeously with hands and arms like a wreath, she’s never saying “Look at me” but always “Where next?” Holding one arm flexed, she waits as if deciding; then she brings her raised hand softly over her face as if ruefully; and then pow! She’s off, her whole body driving her forth into the next adventure of her soul.