Performance as Natural Habitat

Penelope Freeh, the recipient of a 2010 McKnight Artist
Fellowship for Choreographers, will be in residence at MANCC (a national choreographic center in
Tallahassee, FL) May 6-19, 2012 to develop her new work Slippery Fish. This residency is supported in part by
the McKnight Artist Fellowship program. Slippery Fish will premiere at the
Southern Theater in Minneapolis, September 28-30, 2012.

Here we are at Atomic Coffee. We like to visit the cutie
with the goatee behind the counter. He just upped the ante with a shot of
coconut syrup in my iced Thai coffee. (Fancy coffee always makes its way into
my process, a little reward for pushing through my grumpy crap.)

It's been a huge week: negotiating all things new and then
topping it off with a showing Friday. I wanted to do it, to open the work to
comments and questions at this vulnerable time. We'll do it again next week
with the musicians.

The showing was "successful" in that it put eyes on the work
and forced Patrick and I to get it together. Interesting how our performing
instincts rose to the surface. A comment even came up about our clear use of
focus and eye contact, things we have not discussed at all. The showing brought
out our primal instincts. We retreated to our natural habitat. We performed.

The first chunk feels like it has a life of its own. It
dictates its own structure and pacing. Patrick is offered, like a soliloquy,
like a sacrifice. We pass through one another, affecting the other in the
process.

I keep watching "the dailies," films of our work each day.
(iPhones are miracles!) I just discovered some movement material from around
Tuesday that I had forgotten. It might well go with a phrase we created
yesterday. Interesting that these are from totally different and disparate
impetuses and yet there's a familial relationship.

I know I have plenty of material to launch from when Jocelyn
arrives. Nevertheless I'm experiencing restlessness, a sense of
not-good-enough, not good, not enough. I think that's why I keep watching, to
excavate what I haven't used yet but also to see, to really see, that there's
something concrete.

There are passages that I love, and I love how they were
created. All the steps from that first chunk have a history that now passes
between us, so that every time they are executed those stories and states of
being bubble up. Yet within that there is room for discovery, deeper
physicality and inter-dramaturgy. In short, I like dancing it, being inside it.

Which brings up another thing: I am dancing again! My foot
surgery was just over a year ago, and it's taken this long to feel back on top
of my dancing. Sadly, I still cannot fully releve on it. This kind of breaks my
heart but at this point I'm "acting as if." I can do most things and weirdly,
in this process, I've been working en pointe. In some ways that's easier and
stranger still, it feels like home. Several days in a row I spent several hours
in my shoes, and in that process a little floating piece of my heart landed
back where it belongs.

So when I say "all things new" I really mean it, though
new-and-slightly-used I suppose would be more accurate.

Week 2 begins tomorrow. Jocelyn and Carrie arrive today. I
am trying not to care-take, worry, pull my hair out. It's STILL all so new. I'm
displaced again, and I need to remember the underpinnings of last week: the
cypresses, the herons, the deep, clear water, the limestone shelf that suddenly
dropped off. We sourced from those images, take-aways from our excursion to
Wakulla Springs State Park. The results are evident: spiraling promenades,
unwinding slowness into turtle poses. Systems have time to root. And still it
is slippery.