Temporary Disability: Shifting Perspective.

Guest Column by Molly White.

I’m lying in the MRI machine, focusing on the slight changes in pitch of each loud pang trying to distract myself from the weight of the situation.  I send myself all the messages that this machine is not.  I tell myself that I am safe, happy and free from pain and I imagine I am surrounded in white light which is protecting me from any harmful magnetic effects of this 20 minute affront, and pretty soon I am relaxed and yes, relatively pain free.photo by TheeErin.

Pain free.  What a concept!  I have a love affair with pain that is both debilitating and self-fulfilling.  It has gone on so long now that when it comes back after a long two or three month absence I almost welcome it like an old and familiar lover.  Perhaps he knocks on my door and I don’t have the heart to turn him away, so reluctantly I let him stay taking up the space and eating my groceries.  With the pain there, I am forced to lie down to experience any relief, so I resign myself, I drop my projects and deadlines, hoping that in a week or so I will be back on my feet and pain will be gone.  But every time I worry that this time he might stay for good.

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People Watch

A gang of dancers encounter the people of New York City.  Who is watching whom?  
Conceived and choreographed by Deb Silver of Silco Dance.  Running time 4:19 minutes

Martyred Mom Cracks Her Shackles!

Martyred Mom Cracks Her Shackles!  arose out of deep frustration over the seeming impossibility of reconciling motherhood and self-fulfillment.  Made in 2005, the video tells the story of a devoted mother’s tortured journey from martyrdom and guilt to freedom and possibility.  It is an amalgam of interview, performance art, and odd experimental technique (because the mother didn't know what she was doing).  The music, by Marty Beller of They Might be Giants, makes it an energizing experience.

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Duet With Doubt

When my friend Marta asked me to do a little (no pressure!) dance at a little (really, no biggie) Festival, I panicked.  Riddled with Doubt is what I was.  During the same week my mother sent a poem that she had written On Doubt.    

Duet with Doubt screened at the Sans Souci Festival of Dance, including their Texas State University tour, the Austin Woman's Film Festival, and  the Baltimore Women's Film Festival.

A woman confronts her shadow. Reading her mothers poem, On Doubt, the woman engages with the unsavory presence and discovers how to start working. (2:10 min)

Bridges

Updated on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 10:16AM by Elena Taurke

Let go…..Cleopatra.. said my dance teacher in response to my failure to connect a phrase.   Say what?!  said I, stalling for time. It's a Donkey Bridge, he clarified, let go of the arms, then Cleopatra to make a shape.   A memory device, a connector, so called because donkeys are supposedly too stupid to make it across the river any other way.   In Zen it is said: Every Ass can Pass.   Every one of us can get to the other side but we need the right bridge.  

Words can be a bridge to dance.  Dance can be a bridge to freedom.   Yoga to meditation or meditation to yoga.   The specter of death is a nifty bridge to a satisfying life.  

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