day 8 drawing 8 troika 33

Early one Sunday morning I realized a Forsythe concert series was ending that afternoon at the Boston Ballet. I called/texted a girlfriend until she woke up, gave her a lean 40 minutes to get ready promising coffee and croissants for the drive, then bought tickets and leapt into the shower. 

Who’s Forsythe? One of the greatest living choreographers — and a visual artist. William Forsythe was the director of Ballet Frankfurt and then of his own company, which regularly visited the Brooklyn Academy of Music when I lived only a few subway stops away. ‘In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated’ — with lithesome virtuosic Sylvie Guillem and music by Thom Willems — could be my theme song/movie track/truck me off to the cemetery any day. Fangirl gushing aside, we had a wonderful day, and I even got to see the man himself wending his way to the concert hall and not crash the car, or terrify my friend, too much.

Sitting high in the balcony, seeing the stage fully, I was struck (again, always) by the architectural organization of his pieces — the stark lighting, the long direct entrances and exits, the scale of the entire company moving in unison then shifting into smaller groups diverting, overlaying and slipping through each other, and niching down further into intricate trios, duets and solos. Choreographic rules abound, and yet the structure of the pieces are heightened and rebuffed by the organic expressivity of the dancers’ bodies—musculature and feeling within each, mingling and spliced among others.

Here, in Troika 33, I was given a new order, arbitrary, but an order to explore and work through, press into and push away. Crossings, grand flights, sweeps and single runs define the page. But I am still impatient. The pitter patter of my fingers mince in the high relief of shadows and half-light, plumbing for a way in, to make a mark, to interrupt, to deny and acquiesce within a collision of assertions and invitations.

day 8, drawing 8: Troika 33, 3/2019, image 14 ½” x 10 ¼”, archival print on a Hahnemuhle photo rag 19” x 13” sheet, signed, stamped, chopped, and numbered.

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