This is a sample of the design that Christine Joly de Lotbiniere is designing for Mammal, one of the dances in Little Fictions, Ragged Memoirs.

Here is her latest note to me: “This is one of 12 panels for the skirt; each panel having a variation on a theme. I think the hand sewing of the black appliqués, though labor intensive,  lends a very interesting quality to the pattern…. we just would not have achieved this with machine stitching them down. I used vintage threads throughout, some of them from the 1950’s and the quality of the thread is so superior to what we have today! You can decide to leave the hanging threads or to remove them. I believe they lend a fantastic “mammal” organic feeling.

I purchased leggings and will be overdyeing those, possibly painting into them as well. The gloves have been patterned so they are next up: extra length added to them and ombre dyed from black at the fingertips to nude at the top of the arms, I will be applying texture and pattern to those as well. They will have latex applied on the palm and fingers.”

Exciting!  The journey of this dance has been intense. This is how I describe the dance: Mammal is a “shape-shifting” dance – a cellular, poetic echolocation that viscerally connects male and female, human and non-human at the porous borderland where they intersect and blend.

It feels like I have been invoking this dance for two years.  In the process, I have experienced a re-wiring of my nervous system and a re-configuration of my body’s systems:  fluid, bone, cells, fascia.  It is as if my flesh had to be readied to receive the transmission.

For Christine, this has meant staying in the saddle as the dance bucks, shifts and morphs.  But then, she is good at that, really, really good, which is why we have worked together for so long.

If you love dance, if you love theater, design, please help to support this audacious, ambitious project.  We are nearing the end of our Indiegogo campaign, but not the end of our work, our inspiration, and our desire.

You can help support artists and art!

Please DONATE to our Indiegogo campaign.

Thank you!

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We are on the cusp of launching our bold Indiegogo campaign.  Just putting on the finishing touches, polishing up our perks and getting ready to invite you to become a part of Little Fictions, Ragged Memoirs, my most ambitious dance theater project yet.  Watch for it!  (We will let you know, of course)

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I spent the weekend in the theater, directing Ryder Cooley’s production of Xmalia.  For the past number of years, my theater has been the arena, dancing with horses.  It is good to get back inside for a bit.

The theater is a good place to look for light.  Literally, figuratively.  My focus with this production is to find the light within the dark themes of extinction and mourning.  To bring each of the performers into their individual, specific lightness of being.  And doing that in such a way that the shadows are also revealed, the spaces between, the interstial illuminations.  That is how the work can surprise us with little moments that shake the heart, as well as the big ravishing ones.

How are you finding the light?

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On Sunday, January 8, C. Ryder Cooley is bringing her show, Xmalia, to the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, CT.

I first met Ryder when I interviewed her for my book.  A friendship bloomed, and I have since been helping her with direction and choreography for her lovely show.

Ryder is a serious artist who creates and inhabits worlds that are both whimsical and deadly.  Xmalia explores themes of extinction in film, song, movement and trapeze.  Among her subjects are deer gigantus, tiger, butterflies and the tragic dodo.  Joining her onstage are her band of musicians and the exquisite Lady Moon.

Ryder calls her work “tragedy cabaret,” a description I find apt and provocative.  Showtime is Sunday at 5:00.  You will not be disappointed.

postscript:  Breaking into Blossom begins January 23.  It is an online, five-week meditation on moving into an improvisational life.  There will be assignments, conversations and surprises.  Join us!

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