A friend asked me today how I fell in love with dance, and with writing about dance. This is the best I could come up with:
where did it come from … and why …ohhhh. i dunno (sorry am overusing that this morning. but it’s necessary). makes me want to answer with auden:
Like love we don’t know where or why,
Like love we can’t compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.
i think i told you that for months it terrified me, having to review, i felt totally out of my depth and like a sham and all of that. but, and i am not sure i told you this, there was also from very early on the thrill of it … it was so much faster and dirtier than reviewing books and vis art, which i had been doing mostly before. no net. no hands. i liked that. and then .. well, somehow i was good at it – even when i was bad at it i think i was good at it in certain ways. ways i could recognize, and that encouraged me. and then once i moved away from the joyce and city center and discovered dtw and the kitchen and on from there – then i just felt … well, i at first didn’t understand the work at all. but i LOVED it. i loved how close everyone was in the room, how messy it was, how perfectly imperfect. and how, even if the work didn’t quite get to where it wanted to there was this sense of live-wire idea making – that desperate pleasure. i mean, why would anyone do this? you can’t make a living wage, your wider culture at best ignores you … so, if you’re doing it, there must be something pretty big at stake. and then, too, it made me think of poetry – i think the structures of dance and poetry are so similar. the internal logic. so there was that kinship, right away, for me. even groping around in the dark i could see that. and then – well, i just got greedy. wanted to see more.