I travelled by squatting in a small, 18", round red scooter-dish/hovercraft powered by four D-cell batteries. It only went 25 miles an hour and was hard to control, but I could put it in my backpack when I arrived. I made a note to get an extra set of batteries.
Rehearsal was scheduled for 3:00, but got moved to 8:00. I wanted to make handouts but had no money. I spent the time in fierce mental preparation.
I wanted to convey that I was a physical theatre director, so I brought the videos of WarHorses and my work at the Odin. The Odin snippet was of me doing a handstand on wheelbarrow handles in the corner of the room, from which I dove out the open window and over the roofs, swoop-flying. On the far side of the roofs, a cliff fell 120 feet to the sparkling blue sea. Later, I climbed out on the cliff but was too scared to jump, and froze, clinging to the orange rock -- although the senior Odin people jumped freely. I was heartened to see how strong & disciplined I looked in the video, even at my current weight, wearing black leotard and tights.
Time for rehearsal.
Seven people show up: five women, two men. One guy is a musician, has many ethnic drums & instruments. We go out back to rehearse. It is an outside basketball court, in the hot sun on an asphalt roof, like our game developers in Chicago had. But it's free, so this is our space. We begin. Turns out they have all had Suzuki training; when I start O Splendor, they join in. I get a little spurt of happiness.
Then one woman says, "Well, actually, there is a space behind our store we can use." Their back door opens into an underground labyrinth of old cement, brick, and corridors, behind all the stores on that block. We go in. This room is much nicer --long, with black and white linoleum, cool, quiet. As we're talking, another woman says, "Well, there is that other space behind this one. Leezie lets us use it for free, if no one has it booked."
We go in.
It is a samurai temple -- hardwood floors, tatami mats, dark brown pillars, twelve dark-brown tibetan singing bowls placed as if waiting for a company to sit. The space with the 12 bowls is the innermost space. Absolutely sacred and clean. I was blown away. "How much if we want to book it?" I asked. "$500 a month," they said. "We'll pay," I said, so shocked at its beauty that I could no longer hold onto the dream.
Reeling, I fell skyward, waking up.
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INTERPRETATION
My next step will grow out of my current state, which is, literally, stationary. In real life, after Dance Company I moved to Palo Alto, where I played piano for two ballet studios in the evenings (in return for classes), plus worked in a stationery store. So I associate stationery with love and rigorous physical work -- and with moving across the country, beginning anew.
When I follow theatre, the way keeps appearing. The better space always lies more inwardly, toward the heart.
I get body hits all over this dream. Plus I worked out hard yesterday, doing both Suzuki training & a ballet barre, and I have declared 2005 "The Year of the Body." It looks like my unconscious is getting the message.
Even asleep, I am sharply occupied with the perennial search for rehearsal space. Or maybe it is also the search for my space in life, the new space I must carve. The spaces in this dream progress from one like the videogame company (Microsoft)... to one like BCC... to one like the Odin, mirroring my life's path.
That little red scooter-dish means I'm currently going way slower than other people. On the other hand, although slow, the scooter dish WAS something new -- it was actually a hovercraft, not a wheeled vehicle. It was a student conveyance, like a bike. So, maybe I'm just new at this unfolding life of mine.
In real life, I saw The Last Samurai over and over while I lived at the Odin. I, too, was living with samurai -- with practitioners of a life of greater purity, ethics, and discipline than I had known. And living there was remaking me. The samurai temple felt to me like the heart of the samurai village, just as the Odin studios felt like the heart of the theatre.
The samurai temple in The Last Samurai
And, while I'm at it -- this is another space that has been resonating with me. In the Nureyev video, they were talking about how he began with folk-dance training. They showed the kind of folkdancing he had done -- but what blew me away was the SPACE in which they were dancing. I could feel, like a physical jolt, my hunger for that space. The same feeling I had in the dream for the samurai temple.
An incredible Russian space, from the Nureyev video
When I first visited Moscow, I was being driven to a play with a Russian theatre director, his actress wife, and translator daughter. "That theatre is now empty," translated his daughter, pointing to a large building. He spoke again in Russian. Before she could translate, I guessed -- "And I would like that space?" I asked. They laughed; it had been, to the word, what he had said.
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