The Solo

He played the score and I did the task.  I did it with all of my might, not as an emotional act but as a nearly impossible physical task.  It is a slow and minimalist solo that begins on the balls of the feet with both legs criss-crossed with the ankles touching and heels as high off the ground as possible.  Then you roll down real slow with the arms dangling and the neck released and the head dropped and you scoop like mad from the muscles in your belly as you roll down very very slow until your knuckles touch the floor and try not to fall.

The heels have to stay up as high as possible until the knuckles touch the floor.  That is the beginning of the solo.   (Try it.)  Josh’s score is a sequence of yearning, determination, arrival, desperation, loss, emptiness and acceptance. There are a few phrases spoken by a female voice that repeat: “You can’t write how nervous my hands get.” and “I have maintained a way of life.”  The solo is five minutes long.  The combination of the simple yet challenging effort-based task executed with total commitment with Josh’s highly emotional score creates a palpable tension.  Sara said it “slayed” her to watch the solo in the studio that day when Josh and I were working on it over and over again at VPL.  As Josh and I begin working on our next project I want to keep this approach in mind: A sequence of tasks as a sequence of events.  That is the definition of narrative I am drawn to--a sequence of events. A task, one simple and effortful idea executed not performed.  Because the performer gets lost in the concentration of the task they lose the mask of the performer and become a person doing the task.  Then we get to watch someone doing something interesting because they are being challenged and there is a risk of failure so they try really hard.  In watching them try to accomplish the task we get to know more about the person behind the performer.  We want them to succeed so we become invested in who they are and what they are doing.  That is what I am really after.