Sure enough, each of the four came to Brooklyn, and posed for 2 or 3 works each. The works were put in the entrance hall as part of their coming out performance.
I had met M___ only briefly, when the four of them, together, looked at my stuff on my laptop during a rehearsal break. Later Joy called me and told me they had decided to do the work.
M____ was the most difficult to schedule. We worked well into the morning making this piece, and one other, where she was portrayed holding her violin.
What to write about M__ ? She set to work immediately composing a symmetrical prose poem for me to write around her body. Literate, athletic, musical, talented.
She completely understood the problem of making a meaningful single tracing, how the muscles normally relax and the body can suddenly turn to a limp cutout, versus a living standing being. The artifice in this kind of work is that the model must assume a standing pose while on the flat floor, as in yoga, muscles held against each other, the rest of the body relaxed. M___ did this task with superb discipline and grace. She put her muscles into action, i.e. 'tensed' them, while lying on the ground, and never moved a millimeter whilst I was writing around her. She held this pose for about an hour. A tour de force.
One who can be motionless, for an hour, is capable of explosive power in dance. So it is with M____. Her performance was a liberation of virtuoso, she played and danced simultaneously, never missing a step, or a beat.
Her 'writing' was an abstract breakdown of a tribal song sung by women who gather water in Africa. She had taken this piece of folklore, and tuned it into a dance.
Symmetry meshed radically into the composition of the written work. The ritual is there in the the way the words are composed, split and recombined end to end, like a piece of folded paper. End matches beginning, descent, return, ascent return. Ouroboros.
-:-
Write your thoughts as a guiding circle about your being.
Then watch what happens.
