We are not okay. The children are not okay. The teachers are not okay. Gaia is not okay. I despair at times; I wonder if this is in fact The Great Depression? I wonder if the tenacity of human nature that I’ve always believed in, is going to see us through. Through what? To what? A restaurant near us put up a sign at the beginning of the quarantine “See you on the other side”. It was oddly comforting at the time, as if we were just starting a game like seeing how long we could hold our breath going over a bridge or past a cemetery and finding out we can do it and at the other side we let the held breath out in one big burst and laugh.
But the game didn’t work out that way; we couldn’t hold our breath long enough and it is not funny. Instead, I find myself having to dig deeper into new spaces of fortitude, compassion, and patience. I feel the tenderest of hope that the silver linings in slowing down, building community in new ways, and caring for each other are going to buoy the world up in the long run. Practicing gratitude is often more ardently recommended now and might become more a norm of a daily work ethos; perhaps irony falls from its high place of superiority and instead earnestness, discernment, and love have their day. I note that much of these ideas of silver linings, compassion, and gratitude may sit squarely from a privileged point of view, so I humbly use these practices to serve in my public and private spheres for social and spiritual justice.
This dance is a re-make of a piece I choreographed in 1992 titled O Mortal. The old title is apt here too, but the ChoreOVID title Prayer for the World underscores the self-lessness that I intend. Danced here on a spit of an island in the North Atlantic (watch the tide recede), I hope the amplitude of sky and water invites you to sit quietly for some minutes. The movement is drawn from gestures of supplication, prayer, and yoga asanas; the music is an early christian hymn addressing meditation on the mysteries of life forces; the slow tempo is an attempt to magnify the complexity of cellular respiration and corporeal relationship to cycles of air, soil, and water.
I offer that watching the dance itself is immaterial, feeling the weight of our actions and thoughts is. Unintentionally, what with the flowing costume, scarf, and romantic landscape, there is a nod to my forbearers in the history of modern dance – Isadora Duncan, Ruth St.Denis – and I like the cross-reference to honoring ancestors from the past as we struggle to imagine our new futures.
For the video: