A good dinner party has delicious camaraderie, delightful balance of colors and flavors, clever repartee and well-timed jokes, bits of flirting and flattery, and seamless serving and clearing. Tastes, treats, warmth, and laughter conspire to create an evening of rich stirrings, soulful intoxications, and unforgettable zest. Guests leave amidst confused kisses and hugs, dishes wait for the morning, and shoes are thrown off as hosts recount the scenes of the evening like a post-theatre review.
I miss all of it, even when dinner parties most of the time only aspire to that poetic sketch. There's just something deeply touching to plan a menu and then to steam, sauté, and stir, test the fragrance and the spice, garnish with some parsley or lime, and then gather a bunch of bumbling, unpredictable, sweet humans around a table so that everyone can talk at once, re-tell old jokes, lose track of time, and eat too much.
COVID19 era has put a kibosh on hosting dinner parties. This has caused me to reminisce on my grandparents’, parents’, and friends’ various cultures of hosting and how I have loved them all. But “Dinner Plans” includes an emotional re-orienting. The fact that my European, white, privileged upbringing and influence is on display here is not lost on me; implicit in the piece are questions about who is at the table? Who has served those tables? I wait to see - here’s to new dinner plans in our futures, perhaps more dearly embraced and understood as powerful ways to connect.
The making of this one took many months – various approaches stewed; different camera angles were tried; alternative outfits were considered. In the end, the camera was just about at the height of guests in seats; the music is a soulful 5/4 by Michael Wall along with a sound effect track of a dinner party. The layers of outfits and activities from the beginning up to the final image of “still waiting” hopefully portray a sense of an over-the-top, slightly mad, and not-entirely-right character working to endure the sense of disappointment, aloneness, and social shift the pandemic has given us.
A last note: the gorgeous wallpaper is artwork made by Ric Petry.
Video: https://vimeo.com/507354100
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