When you look deeply at anything that's ordinary, it becomes extraordinary. And so we've been working
on devising this together for a few months, and it is improvised. So we have scores, we kind of have
frames, but we're improvising through the movements. And so it's different than watching a performance
on a stage, and the musicians will be improvising too.
To look at when people are improvising, you can see the real-time choices that they make. You can see
how they're relating to each other, how they're navigating problems. So you're not just watching the
movement, you're watching the relationship that's being created.
the relationship that we're hopefully holding and creating with all of you in this space and the relationship
that we've been like making with this round because we've been rehearsing out here in the public with
people being like what's going on for a few weeks now so I just want to invite you to maybe consider
watching a little differently listening differently yeah and
Taking the time, the dancers are not the only thing. We're in a whole space. So how are the dancers
helping you to see the city differently? Or maybe consider what it means to be here on this lawn, this
public space, differently. Yeah? Okay. Awesome. So we're just gonna do a little tuning practice.
because I think sometimes if we're available to feel ourselves, then we can feel others more, feel our
spaces more. So if you'll join me and you can feel free to participate as you like. So the first practice,
if you'd like, you can close your eyes and we're just gonna open our ears. So you can imagine as if
the ears have maybe,
more space to take in the sounds around us. And first you're just noticing what is here, what is close
in the sounds that we hear.
here. And then in that noticing of that farthest sound, notice the silence under the sound.
our body, the feeling of the heat, maybe the stickiness, the weather, the wind,
imagination of this space, of this place. And I'm just going to invite us into a small little practice.
So first we're just going to shift our weight. So we're just feeling that sinking into the earth, softening
the knees, knowing that you don't always have to brace
can we soften and if you like you could just add a little a little gesture to be like okay I'm softening
I'm feeling the earth I'm feeling my feet
the hips if you like, we're just gently, very small waking up of the body.
this land that has these ancient limestone deposits that we have built our city on and also that kind
of create a foundation in our the story of this place. So what is it to like feel that there's stone
in the history here? There's stone holding us. The stone has a sense of
Let's just take a deep breath together as we get ready to begin. You can inhale, you can stretch up,
maybe twinkle the fingers.
and go into different spaces. So please follow them, listen to them, make sure that we divide so that
we all fit, because one space only holds 17 people. And follow them as we progress. So we're gonna be
moving around. So if you get lost, if you have a program that will hint to where we're going, if you
get left behind, but try not to get left behind on the pilgrimage.
She is our poet guide, so she is another person to follow. And so I'm going to invite you to listen
to an opening poem. You could come closer. You can either look at her or you can look out. The dancers
are arriving in the space physically, so you can feel free to move between
Thanks for joining us on this pilgrimage together. I'm gonna open with a poem and then we will start
our pilgrimage moving this way. So, invocation for earth, sky, body, land. Belonging looks like this.
Here are your hands. How they move like small maps in the morning. How they dust off the curtain over
the sky and remember. Here is your remembering.
widening out like a reach, running the skin of everything against your air. Look who is breathing alongside
of you. Look who is sensing the waters that run through you. It is the ground returning to your body.
It is the outside that is no longer so far away. You are a museum of multitudes, a vessel of history. Once you
the feet traveling across the stone, but the stone itself is evidence. I begun again to look to the
ground for my earthliness. I've been mapping a small pilgrimage even when I do not know where it is
I am going. The edge greets me with new vision.
my teeth. Look how they appear the way a pebble does at the shore. Quiet company, you have been here
all along. It was me taking my sweet time to unearth all I am made of. I begin in a body again.
my sibling. It greets me with its own eyes in the dark and all at once what was so very far.
you in towards this living. You sang back. When I thought I was falling, there you were. A bell so high
up in the tower, I had to turn my head and listen. If we are to enter into this lineage, we must find
our way in through the other. We must turn our knowing even towards the tiniest seed and wait for the
unearthing. And here in our own dirt,
and all we are made of. We birth each other again and again. I watch you dress in the ordinary. I comb
your hair. The days follow our skin around. Even the sun hears this good music. I am made of your small
voice in the mornings. There is an echo that rings in the look on your face. Come now, there is a mother
inside of me. Come now,
There's a mirror somewhere in the sky uncovering this love.
through swollen clouds. Everything here is sick with an ugliness and I don't know where it is going.
I stole pebbles and coins from the fountain outside the department store. Sometimes I can't tell if
I'm looking at a painting or my life. The trees etch themselves into every story and I am sick of not
getting to be the one
true I've sculpted my life into something new so that I do not have to go to the cold edges of space
for love again. I stay on the quiet shore begging to be again. His dark hair snags the corner of my
nakedness and I am undone again. I want to dress this body in something that fits a gown glowing under the light
my grandmother first dance toward what she thought would give her new life. It is cyclical, and if I've
learned anything carrying the weight of this unbecoming, it is that there is always a small window pointing
to a field that once belonged to your body. Look how you blur
the dryer and you put it right on and it's toasty warm. Getting in your bed, your own bed and sleeping
in your bed after you've been gone for a very very very long time. And the feeling in your own bed of
your own pillows and you get the pillows just right so you're so comfortable you never want to move
your leg. Contact. Going camping and seeing your friend already set up your tent for you. Coming home
and noticing that your partner washed the floor. Barefoot in the grass. Coming home and seeing the huge
mess left by your
they knocked over a pot and there's dirt everywhere, but you're thankful because they let your plant
live that long.
on the back patio. That cute hippie chick you saw in a crowd in college and you took a picture of her
but you never knew her name and you never saw her again.
Anything you knew existed.
Lighting candles for any reason. Shabbat. Hanukkah. Birthday cakes. Secrets. Secret rituals. Hiding
under a blanket in the back of the station wagon and creating your own little world.
in your mouth and they're
You don't know how to play your instrument, but you do know how to pose like a record cover and look
like you're playing rock and roll.
all we need to the next location. Can I have all my living people here?
seated, we'll be showing a sort of a documentary with a kind of a Bloomington vibe. Thank you. Yeah.
Hello. Thank you. Hello, bake a popcorn, if you like. Thank you, later. Oh, I'm back. Thank you. How
you doing, man?
So this part here is the guy in the furniture.
is in these pages. When your memories unfurl before your very eyes, you must face your own knowledge.
Look now how within you are corners you forgot you've been. Look now how even the abyss does not feel
so dark anymore. Where you once sat weeping, now you go on galloping. Yes, it is true we are tied to
the body of the story.
Still we are made of dirt which has built a thousand temples. Give yourself a language that treads the
edges of where you have been. Step into the sounds of something so very alive and waiting. All there
is is to return again to what cannot be said.