Lab 4

Title: Dearly Departed

Statement of Intention:  To remember someone who is no longer living through dance.

Objects: 1 performer, 1 memory of a loved one who has passed away

Direction: The performer dances a specific memory he or she had with a person who has passed away.

Conclusion:  The performance concludes when the performer reaches the end of the memory.

Reflection: For my performance, I chose a memory I had with my late grandfather.  He and I drove down the California coast from San Francisco to Big Sur while I was in college.  I flew out to San Francisco specifically to spend time with him, because my mother told me that he was getting older and I would regret not taking advantage of the time I had with him.  The truth is, I don’t remember much about the trip.  I remember the drive down in my grandfather’s hybrid car.  I remember letting him drive for a bit even though my father explicitly told me he was forbidden from driving while I was in the car.  I remember the hotel room we slept in and the crows that congregated outside the window, in a very Hitchcockian manner.  All of these moments became a part of my performance. 

The performance itself took place inside my apartment.  I assigned various parts of the memory to various rooms.  As I moved from one memory to the next, I moved from one room to the next.  I noticed that at the beginning of the piece, I was full of energy and joy.  As I progressed, I realized that reminiscing about my grandfather and thinking about how he was no longer here was depressing me and my movement.  Even writing this down is making me upset.  By the end of the piece, I was sitting on my bed, motionless, for about twenty minutes as my mind wandered to other memories of him.

I felt that this script was successful, since the subject was memory and it led me to remember a lot.  I am grateful for this assignment, because I felt that I was able to connect with my grandfather, who died in late November of last year.  In short, this was a hard but ultimately fruitful assignment.