the art of bodies in motion



Thursday, February 20, 2014

Impression: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Fiona Shaw & Daniel Hay Gordon performing at Bouffes du Nord in Paris. For Ann Moradian's IMPRESSION of this work for The Dance Enthusiast, click here.

Photo (c) Richard Hubert Smith

Reviewer's Notes:
It all started with rehearsals in director Phyllida Lloyd's kitchen. Fiona Shaw (who you may know as Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter films, but she has done so much more!) and Lloyd were just thinking to present something relatively informally for their friends, they said at the Q&A following the performance I attended, as a way of bringing poetry to life through theatre. And while the costumes remain pretty ordinary (simple black t-shirts and trousers), it has long left the kitchen and the UK, to travel through Greece, the US and most recently Paris at Peter Brook's dream of a theatre, Theatre des Bouffes du Nord.

It was interesting to learn that the single dancer, in the form of Daniel Hay-Gordon, was originally a chorus of 6 male dancers. Only Danny, Shaw explained, could move through the physical images quick enough to keep pace with the rhythm of her text. Brought to life vividly by this team of artists, it will be long while yet before it returns to a quiet existence in the private domain of Phyllida Lloyd's kitchen.
--
am

Monday, February 3, 2014

The Chant of Medusa

The Chant of Medusa © Ann Moradian. All rights reserved.

I do not ask to know
knowing that knowing is past;
knowing that knowing now
means living now, no more.

I do not ask to know
knowing that knowing cannot be held;
knowing that knowing cannot be held,
alone.

I do not ask to know
knowing that knowing is moving, through time;
knowing that knowing
knows only a moment.

I do not ask to know
knowing that knowing is memory
of a moment before.
Trapped in a moment, motionless
for a lifetime, knowing
a memory.
Living now no more.

Living now, no more.
Moving forward with the moment that is now
now now
now --
Knowledge carries me in its arms.
Dare I see?

I do not ask to know
knowing that knowing cannot be held;
knowing that knowing
can only be known being held.
I ask to be-held and be-hold.
Sharing this moment in time and space;
beholden to each other by membering the moment that is now
now now
now --

--Ann Moradian, July 25, 2009