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Collections on Loss

“They say nothing is lost, but I never believed them. I think everything can be transformed so drastically from its original form that it becomes desperately unrecognizable. To say that nothing can be lost is the say that nothing can ever be. Consider this: If the time we had cannot be held in our hands, where does it exist? If I search for the sound of you and can not locate it, is this not lost? They say rosemary is for remembrance (pray you, love, remember) but it is not the memory that has left me, but the actuality of you. I define in memory, define in those instances that led me to the decision of remembrance. 

Where live those memories that have not yet happened? Nights of youth in crowded bars, our wine-drunken stupor, kissing strangers. Nights where we would fall asleep in the same bed, your hands resting into my sternum, and me, slowly, pushing back until skins melted and skeletons fused with hands over hearts.This wouldn’t happen, but I dreamt of us there.. I can give away what did not, and will not happen. It is only mine to give, but I must ask,  do you carry the same pictures, or have you let them go along the way? 

Loss can be shared, be ongoing, be intertwined. Each of us constantly present in the other, communally tethered to that event of meeting the world and the event of setting it behind, or in, or onto us.

What becomes of something when it is lost, and then returned? What resides in us, unacknowledged? They say the psoas muscle carries our memories, traumas, what is too heavy for the brain to bear that the legs take the burden. When people have this muscle released, they are flooded, reliving moments and sensations. Sometimes, they use the very same muscle to launch themselves into a jolt, to run from what they thought had vanished.”

Lilly McGonigle, December 2020

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carrying a rage, a leftover rage I cannot undo.

Anne Sexton, from Live or Die; A Little Uncomplicated Hymn. (via xshayarsha)

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I was full of letters I hadn’t sent you,

Anne Sexton, from All My Pretty Ones; Flight. (via xshayarsha)

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I am a collection of dismantled almosts.

— Anne Sexton, "Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters"

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I have never, in my life, read a poem that ended with the words The End. Why is that, I wonder. I think perhaps the brevity of poems compared to novels makes one feel that there has been no great sustention of energy, no marathon worthy of pulling tape across the finish line. And then I found a poem of mine that I had carefully written by hand in the sixth grade, and at the bottom of the page, in India ink, beautifully apart from the rest of the text, were the words The End. And I realized children very often denote the end because it is indeed a great achievement for them to have written anything, and they are completely unaware of the number of stories and poems that have already been written; they know some, of course, but have not yet found out the extent to which they are not the only persons residing on the planet. And so they sign their poems and stories like kings. Which is a wonderful thing.

Mary Reufle, “Madness, Rack, and Honey” (via mrsgeiger)

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melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name.

Mary Ruefle, from Madness, Rack, & Honey

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Interview Extraction with Aleixa and Molly

L: I would love to hear about the shifting of the role from like dancer, choreographer, performer to more like dancer, choreographer, director, and what you got out of making a work you weren’t dancing in?

M: I notice I'm definitely more biased towards myself as the dancer. Because of that, I was able to make a really non-biased choreographer. I wasn’t so caught up in how I looked doing the movement that I was really able to take a step back and look at the form.

A: I noticed I was much more involved when I was in the piece,  but I definitely like stepping out, and we were committed to not being in this. It allows you to take yourself out of the work in a way that's related to ego.

M: I think it’s a really great exercise for anybody who wants to make to  experiment with both not being in your work and being in it.

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Interview Extraction with Reid Bartleme

L:  I am  interested in working in collaboration. I find myself working um in a lot of duos, which i think is something you can kind of relate to.  I am specifically thinking about your partnerships with Harriet Jung and Jack Ferver. Working inside of these two you know separate duos, how do  you navigate maybe a difference in creative ideas or a conflict arising?

R: it's a very good question and it has been at times complicated. Those relationships um sort of ebb and flow in terms of how smoothly they go,  and they're a little different because my relationship with Harriet is very much central to our livelihood. You know it is like the work that we do. Harriet,  though we are friends, it's more of a professional relationship than the one that I have with Jack which is a little bit more boundary less. There's a different kind of history. In terms of disagreement, what is fundamental to these relationships is that I trust both of them. So,  with Harriet I  trust her aesthetic opinion. When she has a feeling about something visual, even if I'm having a different feeling,  I'll really try to think about “why does she feel that way,”  and it doesn't become a fight, it’s just an inquiry about why we feel differently about this.  Now this partnership would not have sustained any amount of time if Harriet and I were having these kinds of disagreements all the time. We tend to agree about how things look,  about the kinds of things we want, and where we arrive at different conclusions or disagree it only opens up like a bigger conversation and it kind of expands our design practice towards what else is there.  What Harriet brings into the relationship is just a different point of view: not coming from a dance background, being a woman, being an immigrant, being from the west coast, etc. We're very different! Though we like each other and agree aesthetically. I  need a conversation in order to feel happy in my creative process. The other thing that having the Harriet partnership does that when you go into a situation with a client or  with another kind of collaborator you feel reinforced because there's two of you.

In my work with Jack, oftentimes I'm just dancing for him. Then I started to design for Jack and his work. Designing for Jack is extremely easy because he's easily able to to explain what it is without saying too much. He just says what the clothes are in their most basic form and then he doesn't care beyond that. Which is perfect because  to have such a clear base and then to be able to extrapolate on that leaves a lot of room creatively for me, but also I don't feel unparameterized. We tend to be on the same page. Jack and I have a sibling relationship where we quarrel and we do like to drive each other insane, but there's so much care and love fundamentally that we can always come back to things and it's okay.

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they say nothing is lost, but I never believed them.

Dancing and choreography: Lilly McGonigle Cinematography and Animation: Trevor McKeon Video Editing: Lilly McGonigle and Trevor McKeon. Music: Yo-Yo Ma, Kathryn Stott - The Swan (Saint-Saëns) Recorded at The Fidget Space, Philadelphia, PA. Made for solo studies with Jesse Zarrit, December 2020.

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Enactment Part 1

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ENACTMENT #2

This postcard was made with practice I have begun where I take old photos of people I don’t know, and try to give them something of myself. I thought the form was interesting, because in the postcard being sent out to someone, I am then giving said person more of myself and this unknown person, in the hopes that it will be a mutually reciprocal relationship

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Enactment #3- The Duet

In motion we are

constantly spinning

you told me

where to stand

And I, placed,

began.

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

not quite like

a two-bottle-of-wine night

where head hits pillow

stomach follows

falling through the mattress

spilling onto floorboards.

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

more like

when air pushes

between your hands

separates fingers

and you push back to feel

heartbeat in fingerprints.

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

not in and not out

a blurred haze of

uncertainty

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

predictable

and, please,

before we make it home, let’s leave

just enough time

to throw sour words

through the others chest

 In motion we are

constantly spinning 

we didn’t speak for awhile after

the cycle broke

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

the sickness hasn’t ceased

the duet begins and ends

with you

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

so please, keep my name out of

your mouth

Every time you speak it

You’re making me stuck

in places that don’t feel like home

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

to lose my body is to find myself

to lose you is to be together

forever imprinted

 In motion we are

constantly spinning

The finality of it all is ongoing.

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Thesis proposal

This research began as an examination of the self as a collection. Questions such as how am I an accumulation of other people’s quirks and habits? What remains consistent, and what changes, when I change my space/the people around me? Does the self only consist of what has been gathered from other people? When I enter the space with all parts of me, (or of you), what does that look like? What does the relationship of change look like? were central in navigating artistic practices and generating choreographic material. My work has always, even prior to coming to UArts, been collaborative. After navigating through these past four years, this way of making is an inherent need in my process. As my research has developed, these central questions have shifted, but I still carry them alongside the process. I don’t want to lose this language. Recently, I have been considering how, within this accumulation of self, loss is constantly occurring. I have been questioning how loss can also be an accumulation? What does it mean to lose someone and carry their absence with you? When I collect pieces of other people, am I losing parts of myself? How is loss a desperate transformation? What shape does absence hold? 

These more recent questions come from my personal history and experience of becoming swept up and enamored with a person, absorbing them into myself, and then having a drastic falling out and being left with the ghost of that person, our memories, and experiences. I am curious about how remembering someone is another way of loss, how memory is inaccurate and can fail us, and, to borrow language from Ralph Lemon, how we are, “dancing with ghosts.”

A lot of inspiration draws from text works, specifically because I am interested in how this medium is always giving something away. Works that have inspired me over the years are Anne Sexton’s poetry. What captures her ability to be witty and frank, her lightness while simultaneously displaying broken heartedness. Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Michele Foulcault’s Of Other Spaces are two forms of essay I have been working with to gather information on my two places of study: self and place, and self and loss. Dance works that have inspired my research are Emily Wexler’s Evergreen, How can you stay in the house all day and not go anywhere? by Ralph Lemon, Rodney Murray’s I am Ther Zookeeper, David Bowie’s The Mask and EAGER by Allison Schulnik.

I want this work to feel a little desperate, a way to make something out of what I have lost. I want to create a localized place or places where we can encounter any and all of ourselves. I don’t want it to feel melodramatic, but I have a feeling it might dance on the border of that. I want to use voice. I want to feel this is an interaction between people who are performers, not just Performers. I want our outstanding relationships to enter the room. 

The fantasy has always existed within the structure I know: The University of The Arts School of Dance. I always imagined presenting my senior thesis in the y-gym, designing lights, working with 3-5 dancers. I admit, giving away this vision has been hard. I imagine the work to be simultaneously extremely physical, with bodies in motion, almost collisions, and moments of extreme clarity. Conceptually, I am interested in how subtle changes accumulate into dramatic shifts. I have been playing slow moving practices that slowly, and almost without noticing, the positions of the dancers change from two extreme opposites. I.e. slow dancing and pushing very hard into each other. 

For community a project, I am interested in how we can all dance together but not through the screen. Perhaps sending out a mass score and having a bunch of people participate with the ideas around the research at the same time. I am okay with it not being documented in anyway, just knowing that we were moving with each other is enough. Letting ourselves be together, and letting the product of that be lost. 

For my localized project, I will create a dance film. It would maybe be a solo or a duet or trio between myself and one or two other dancers who I will be in a close pod with. I am interested in showcasing this as a film and eventually as a live performance. I think this process will continue past my intended date of graduation, as I find it inherent that this work is seen live, that touch, and dripping, and melting into one another can safely happen.

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final practice-revisting

“a refusal to look directly”

for this practice, i made a folder on my desktop

And I put all the photos of me and those I had lost in it. 

This action was, in itself, a way of prohibiting a refusal to look directly. 

Before, when I saw those photos I would scroll past quickly. The pain of seeing these people existing was too much.

Now they have a space to exist. I know they are there, and I won’t be surprised by their appearance anymore. 

It made me sad, but it provided comfort. 

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dismantle what is known cont

tears, as I watched you coming

probably from a dream

Where listening holds you, disjointed

And grabs at you, throwing unhappy pleas of less sleep

Let’s go and we could make this new

We could feel the moon

Forgive me,

My gears tell me

That stomping is the only way to save

Two people who were lovers

You had enough

Two was enough

But no one can fix it

Dance cannot be halved and be cold

Saving its sweet from canyons, beautiful and hollow.

This only reappears

Fucked up

On this

Breakfast

Tell me

I’m still in love with you

i have eaten our silver rings

It’s getting late

In one room

Music playin

You were probably so cold

There’s nothing