hipsync blog

Reindeer bride ghost

the shaman called her up

she’s eating the forest

and regurgitating the people

Yoko Ono and mountain man’s love child

Arrival in a strange homeunsure of her footing

a nest, a womb, an island

maddening lost moments, regrets, grieving

back to business

sweeping a dirt floor

finding her true path

time for coffee

listening to her ancestors

there was a tsunami

bones became sand

reborn in the wrong skin

a petulant predicament

time to end the discussion and listen

His look crumbles her

Her need rebuilds her

Some high ideal calms her

The axis of the earth revolves her

Her cliff-face avalanches

she arrives

Points of impact, fault lines, hanged,

preparing the dead, instinct, animal vs.human, war paint/groomed for battle,

desire, hunger, shame, disintegration, feeding on the fallen

eaten alive

Resurrection—leaving the tomb

a staircase

letting go of the body, the carcass

Grandmother’s story

led to the sound of water moving

stirring the landscape

tapping out a signal

becoming rock, hillside, landscape

moon passing behind clouds.

singing up the past and the passed over

sounding out the memories and the missing

calling across the valley from this body to the disembodied

there’s a vision in my vocal chords

it’s red like childbirth and deep as regret

I open my throat and ignite

they are climbing a snowy slope
their feet scrape, slip
breath in little clouds in front of their faces
three women climbing, pioneers, no footprints before them
gloved hand catches a rock, knee thuds to earth, eyes squint upward
some song in their ears keeps them climbing 2 3

they are standing on the edge of it
a blue vastness, an unapologetic arrival
and they begin to throw it all over
all of it
it careers, dives, spills, plunges, shatters, gets what’s coming to it

they are descending
in an acceleration of fur and feathers
gathering speed and sparks
igniting and alighting
devolving into a trilogy of smiling snarls
into legend

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—choreographic text/research for 2009 collaboration in Lappland, Sweden with Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt (Sweden) and Heidi Durning (Japan)