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Austin, 3/22/05
After four recent uneventful practices of The Ridge, I was
a bit worried. This morning I finally broke through the tyranny of
linearity and was able to be still enough within the form to experience
treat after treat that lay hidden in the moment. ("Could this
be considered an Easter bunny message?" she suddenly thought.)
Austin,
4/6/05
“O,O”
is long for two concentric circles: a reminder that the performer
is one part of a larger frame.
Austin,
4/7/05
For the first time possibly since March 10, I noticed how my dancing
displaced space all over the stage rather than an immediate area of
tactility, plus, a theoretical sense of the stage.
Austin,
4/8/05
Often I feel as if I am in a wrestling match with time within the
performative space of my work. I wrestle with the persistence of my
own internal timing, and the quickly adapted timing of certain movements
within the whole dance. When the element of time is not fixed, why
do I so easily attach to a time frame for the execution of my movements?
Austin,
4/9/05
I
just came across this statement that Rino Pizzi made about my work:
"If we put it in simple terms, Hay's work asks us to answer a
question: what is the relation between movement--that is what our
body does in the various spaces it inhabits--meaning, and our perception,
at a given moment of our lives. But the more unsettling underlying
question is: what is a given moment of our life, and even more unsettling,
can we find meaning in that at all?"
Austin,
4/13/05
A good performance halts progress.
The body of the performer is less an instrument than a mode of writing
in itself.
The choreography of my dances is mostly invisible and continuously
redefined by how it is being perceived by the performer.
Austin,
no date.
In the world of science, adaptation is defined as serving an evolutionary
function. That is why I prefer adaptation to interpretation to describe
the process by which a performer learns my choreography, practices
it alone for a minimum of three months before it is performed publicly.
Austin,
6/7/05
Today was the first in a short string of practices where I broke through
a sleep in the shape of “The Ridge”. What I realized,
again, is that if I am not engaged in playing "What if.... unique
and original?" nothing, nada, is happening. There is nothing
of interest in the movement by itself. It is
hard to keep remembering this truth.
My
spirit, if you will excuse my language as I am not sure what spirit
means but, poet Gregory Corso comes close with these lines, "Spirit,
spirit is life, it runs through the death of me", must be benefiting
from my recognition of the act of playing "What if... original
and unique?"