Keep your hand moving

One of my "someday" projects is a performance based on the writings of Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones. Her mantra for writing practice is, "Keep your hand moving."

The tape in my car is 2 hours of Kirby Shelstad practicing tabla. "Hi, Rachel," he says, pinging. "Different day. Different drum." Tabla, like conga, is learnt by spoken syllables. So I'm driving around hearing Kirby chant, "DA teera-keeta DA gay-na teera-keeta dahta-gayna DA", and then playing it. Over the course of 40 minutes, he warms up and starts to fly.

Hearing someone practice unleashes my thinking. As they warm up, so do I.

First I saw the opening of a piece -- a ballet dancer on pointe, and a modern dancer in bare feet. She's dancing to the spoken word, he's dancing to the drum.

Today I had a new flash. Twelve ballerinas at the barre, lining the back of the stage, as Richard III enters. Or better, sprinkle them around the space in 2's and 3's, doing the barre. Different tempos & rhythms. Morph between ballet and daily movement. No -- give them each a chunk of tabla, and have them create a specific movement phrase to it, then montage those. Yes. AND, have them create their movement phrases by doing a specific murder from the play. And, wait -- it's not ballerinas, it's the court doing the barre, in their court clothes. Yeah, closer. This play IS a ballet -- a Rube-Goldberg contraption of murder, set in motion by the opening curtain. DA teera-keeta DA.

Well, that's what I drive around thinking about.

    Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of York; 
    And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
                    -- Richard III, i:i, Shakespeare