WEBVTT

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This is called
"Eclipse Context,"

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and it was very,
very heavily inspired

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by a recent dance performance
that I saw by the Bill T.

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Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

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The name of the performance that
the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane

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Company did was called
"We Set Out Early,

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Visibility Was Poor."

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And it was a lot about--

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or at least Bill
T. Jones said it

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was a lot about, for him,
the century growing old

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and what that means.

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So, I was thinking about the
century in the millennium,

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as is everyone
right now, I think.

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Prologue.

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"The curtains rise.

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We see the dancer is already a
locus and rocks back and forth,

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hunched into, as a
newborn attempts,

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small, meditated steps outlining
the trajectory of our sojourn,

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is political as a
body, is simultaneously

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creation and creator of context.

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The curtains fall.

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We allow ourselves to
shift closer, to be witness

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to a self in lieu of another,
and to adopt a vicarious laugh

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or cough in someone else's seat.

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For the theater is not
full, and do we not

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belong in the center?"

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Body of the text.

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One.

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"All movement is greed
or speed, an attempt

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to impose converse of compose.

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The Black dancer brings
popular culture to the picture.

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To break at the hip is
antithetical to ballet.

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Broken hip, we swing.

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We are smooth fish.

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Our instruments say
yes, no, and often

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pause in an occasion in medias
res of response and say,

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my music has a history.

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It's constantly broken,
branched, a blue note.

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I claim Black and
white ancestors,

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enveloping as the
French envelope desires

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to draw the ocean into the self.

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At this stage, a woman
turns, perpetual conscience,

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perpetual body on the
stage, multiplied,

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beckons us to continue dancing,
infinitesimal amendments,

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gestures, swinging in
a stream of earthshine,

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the problem of the 20th century.

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A loose hip is key to the
narrative's arbitrary ending."

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Two.

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"Dear reader, this
is new terminology

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for exacting meaning
from movement.

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I am attempting a
dialogue with context.

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Please bear with me.

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I desire a structure into
which I may insert myself

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appropriately.

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I ask for a few hours
of sleep every evening.

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Knowing the word edemic,
I am not opposed.

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Perfect pitch is
a cut and paste.

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We can read this without
faith in binarisms

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and expect a string
of possibilities

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to converge in words, in the
humming an electron creates

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to suspend in multiple locales.

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I learned a Lewis
dot structure, which

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fixed deficiency to a page.

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I fight to erase the
two-dimensional imagery.

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Reader, the oscillating
inquiry, never knowing

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the exact position and
its velocity, either/or,

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how things move,
apprehend, change,

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a sudden uncharacteristic.

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I want to be more than two
things at once, understandably

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swollen.

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I amass rocks, shells, detritus,
irony, baseball, and piano.

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Dear reader, turn the page.

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A page is a page.

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Easy tautology."

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Three.

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"Deflated pretense, a
fledgling meditation.

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To impose the metaphor of
the century on a body part,

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anorexia nervosa.

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California sea of black hair is
a Chinese sea, a Japanese sea,

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an Indian Ocean, nervously.

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Certain currents, certain
curtains pulled back

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beyond reachable,
echoed fault and logic.

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We rest on hip and
back and wrist and eye,

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catching an initial momentum.

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Wave reappears as a possible
way to describe the ethics of

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lost and found,
irreplaceable doll.

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Or in other words, my
first word was exoticism.

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The second was spinach.

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I do believe it is our
strength and our stubbornness,

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and the still
unplowed frontier that

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was de Tocqueville's urgency.

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Lay claim to more
stage, expanding

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the area of the theater
in every direction,

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remarkably, exponential growth.

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Plant mangoes in the corn soil.

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Disguise the weather by
wearing goggles and overalls.

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Ask a Hindu priest for baptism.

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You'll see.

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Are you the choreographer?

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Did I hire you?

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A sickled foot is
a misalignment.

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Putting yourself in the
middle of things, ridicules.

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Amend displacement.

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Overlay patch onto the
already busy patchwork.

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Stitch in one more wrong
direction, wrong impulse."

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Four.

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"At stake here is the body,
inertia of incipience.

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Thrust trust into a hemisphere.

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Smaller, circumscribed as a
golden locus upon which stands.

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The shape, which is made when
two or more circles overlap,

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for example, a Venn diagram
highlights the intersection

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between group A and group
B. A equals America.

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B equals other
immigrant country.

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The mathematical equation
is prepared to support

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the exact arc,
the exact inquiry.

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Garbled terms, almond
croissant, crescent,

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bi-section, bi-sexual,
immaculate conception.

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Now, look, there is
an underlined space

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in which you may insert your
deliberate, delicate body.

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Success is dependent
upon the condition

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of existence, the push and
shove of this will to fit.

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I throw a fit because
you don't listen.

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I spit on your shoes
and bite your toes.

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The choreographers
thought in-casting is not

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the postmodern condition of race
or gender or other marginalia,

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choosing instead, by
limitation and possibility

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of each physique.

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What intersections occur,
occur because we are

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unable to suggest otherwise.

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Blond man, Black woman,
coupled, intertwine as a force.

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I glance at my lover
in the seat beside me.

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The context is a
book, is a dance,

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which allows said
brown girl and said

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white boy to occupy a blank.

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To efface the spot as reserved
for an irreality, token,

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realism.

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Hesitant vacancy, the
dancers enter the stage

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in a messy swarm,
though parallels

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are suggested by the chorus
dancing in syncopation.

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The heightened realization of
the individual as a player,

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as active filter,
positioned positioner

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in a landscape, a maze.

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I come out in a
rhetoric of activism.

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I parallel myself to
sustain a chord for myself.

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A tree is waving at me."

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Epilogue.

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"The dance ends as an
ultimate rehearsal.

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Though a finale, not a finale.

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A change will occur
within the system.

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The galaxy will
expand as new stars

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are found, just
as retrospectively

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the striking crew will
find a watch on stage.

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We will investigate
new propositions

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about the dance we witnessed.

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Did the lighting
flicker when the music

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stopped to keep a rhythm?

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Into the years, the folklore,
color of the costumes,

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blue, length of the dance
or its mimetic origins,

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the cold, metal prop, which was
transformed into a carriage.

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In one version,
it will be a car.

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In another, a horse.

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Allowed to remember, we
will turn up the volume

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and invent with precision
every dancer's jutting bone,

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every narrative possibility.

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Thanks.

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[APPLAUSE]

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