Hand movements and gestures have been a frequent choreographic theme in my work. I think of the upper body fore-fronting emotional expression with the hands working utter magic in this regard. Usually, the lower body is supporting and locomoting, so the upper body is free to reach, communicate, interact with outside forces, and touch. Many people now are suffering a deficit of touch – air hugs only go so far, and gentle hands resting on arms or hand squeezes are off limits, not to mention full on physical contact.
In my original brainstorm of pieces for this series I wrote a prompt of simply “hands”. I figured I could make a video in a small space (a given with quarantine) with just my hands, but I only had vague notions that my hands would noodle around in some hopefully intriguing way. Once I realized I wanted only hands in the film (not my body) then I had the problem of angle, background, and orientation. I experimented with my hands over my head against various backdrops, but I found no “hook”. I tried hands in front of me with various panels, trays, and books in front of my body so one would only see hands, and while mostly awkward I did begin to find the potential of a kind of conversation between the two hands, with some glimmerings of character and narrative ideas.
Then I tried bringing my arms down from above in front of something which highlighted the use of the fingertips orienting downward. This opened up some fun ideas – walking fingertips like legs of a person? Was I crazy? But yet again, as in previous pieces in this series I knew I had to push the crazy along and simply go for it. A narrative and characters developed, focusing on the idea of not being able to touch and playing with the omnipresent six foot distancing protocol. It occurs to me that negotiating proximity has always been part of the dance of friendship, courtship, and love.
In these 19ChoreOVIDs, I’ve enjoyed the challenge to make each piece with deliberate and careful design of the “set”, if you will. For Six Feet Two Hands, I thought something with pillows or upholstery would suggest coziness and desire to connect. The turn of the century couch in our Maine rental provided an image of nostalgia, pattern and texture, and a unified field for the ground and backdrop. The music, Summer in Paris by Lance Conrad, gives a cinematic, emotionally wrought, even cliché sense of loss. I hope this piece sits somewhere between toungue-in-cheek, pathos, and a sense of something deeply familiar.
see video https://vimeo.com/443994329