I love love love Italy (that’s me on the right).  Which is why I was so delighted that Michael Moore’s new documentary, Where to Invade Next started there.  Two years ago I had the great pleasure of spending six weeks in Italy for work and pleasure.  What I saw there was what I saw in Moore’s film:  PLEASURE, EASE, CONNECTION.

From the film, I learned that Italians have about eight weeks of paid vacation, + holidays + a 13th month of pay that comes to them each December.  This and health care, education.  When we were in Italy, we didn’t just see tourists in the cafes, museums and restaurants.  There were Italians relaxing, eating, drinking, walking together and talking, smiling, not buried in cell phones, isolated, rushed and pissed off. I felt it in my bones – an ease and opening that is somehow harder to find here.

Maybe the most sobering moment came at the end, in Iceland, when Moore asked a woman to take two minutes to speak directly to the American people.  She was silent, and then said passionately, sternly, that she would NEVER want to be our neighbors or live in our country, because as a culture we are all about the “me” and not the “us.”  It was more complex and well spoken than that – and breathtaking. Iceland and Tunesia have recognized that the answer to many of society’s ills is more women engaged in all tiers of society, especially the political and corporate worlds.  Women are hardwired (it’s in the DNA) to be inclusive, caring  and concerned about the whole, not the individual.

Everyone on the planet should see this film.  Especially in this particularly venal and ugly political climate. Moore’s work is nuanced, compassionate, by turns funny and frightening. Find a theater.  Watch this film.  Take a friend.  Spread the word.

The Messenger (1992)  Photo:  Nick Novick

I performed an excerpt of Mammal at the Booking Dance Festival during the APAP (Association for Performing Arts Presenters) conference on Sunday.

Now I am diving back into The Traveler, the third part of my trilogy, Body Fictions, Ragged Memoirs, that will premiere at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, MA June 3-4 (save the date).

Yes, I changed the name from Little Fictions to Body Fictions. During Sunday’s performance, I had the deep pleasure of being in the same dressing room as my dear friend, the brilliant Claire Porter, whom I met in 1981 when we were in the same Laban program.  We were talking and I said that telling people about the kind of work that I do (not ballet, not modern dance, not contemporary) is challenging. It is theatrical, it isn’t dancey dance. My inspirations range from Wigman to Bausch to Butoh and street dance.  After seeing Mammal, she said that the word body was important, because the work is so from the body.

Which is true, I work not choreograph from tendus, plies and steps ( I do them, of course), but from the organs, fascia, blood, membranes,cells and all the mysteries of the body.  I work from image, connect it inward to bodily systems and then send it out as  movement expression and connection. Some people call that somatic dance, but I find that term to be a bit academic.

Those body journeys can take me into some wild territory, out into untended, ragged turf, stumbling ground, places of rampant, vibrant growth, but also decay and death.  There are beasts there, as well as blossoms.  I work with it all. I am not always in control.

The Traveler is set to the music of Tom Waits.  I was drawn to him because he is the wildest creature that I have found in the musical world – a shaman, a beast, a magician, a wonder.  Watching and listening to him reminds me to keep it real, to be unafraid, to go for it all the way to the wildest edges.  Check it out.