This is our webpage for Dance and Process 2020-2021. It changed, morphed, grew and shrunk, sprouted pages, scripts, codes, stories, mirrors, babies, holes, questions, more space, more action. This Process unraveled onscreen until it didn’t. This Was No Substitute for a Dance. So it comes to an end. As we said at the top, this is a mystery. This is performance. These are publications. (We made another one. We couldn’t help ourselves.) While this is no substitute, we are committed to this union. This is a Dance. 

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Alex Rodabaugh

Watch the 1st Edition here.

[Kris K. Q. Pourzal is here and also he is not. While at the University of Maryland College Park pursuing a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies, he finds himself in the middle of so many things, including this very extended Dance and Process.]

May 7, 2021

Dear Human,

Xray Oscar,

kh  

With Marion

Leslie Cuyjet

5 / Show 

My proximity to her changes each day I approach my desk. With, Marion. I measure how it feels to be so close to a history, a pride, and guilt. With it, of it. Locating center in relation to everyone else, I eliminate the need to explicitly say what ‘it’ is. (It being me, and you—our dynamic—my desires and wants outside of influence and hearsay.) I absorb cues in a flash, riffing off the surroundings. Quietly taking it all in. The silence settles me and ensures I never say anything out loud. 

I tuck this practice in a hidden place. Well, not so hidden now. It’s warm here. And dark. Its own energy, built up by the compression of time and space. And this black is certain. This black has no nuance. No conditional. No exceptions. It devours any lie I can dream up. That I’m safe. That I’m sound. That I have everything I need at my fingertips. That my anxiety is a cloak I can rid myself of if I simply had the will to disrobe. And wouldn’t it be a show to do it right in front of you? Right out in the open so we can rubberneck at the reveal of this deep, dark, pulsating, pit of rage and nothingness. Because it is alive. It is hunting. It is always testing, poking at my skin from underneath looking for a soft spot. Sometimes the only way to soothe it is to feed it with rot. Let a little air out with a touch of destruction. It comes out in chain smoking. It comes out in three fingers of bourbon at noon. It comes out in my voice, hoarse from screaming into my pillow. It comes out in my refusal to “hang out” with you or be generous with my time and in any way. Nope, I don’t owe you shit. What would I do if I didn’t have to meet your expectations? Would I light up the room with warmth and grace? With all of the panache and personality that’s been constructed for me? Covering me in a thick coat of your concoction before the last one even has time to dry. A new cage for this rage. 

Nah, I’ve got her down. Even as I birth her into life. She’s been right under my nose the whole time. She is the red blazer. She is my mom’s laugh at the grocery store clerk who says, “your children are soooo well behaved!” She is the enthusiastic acceptance of a free cut with the stylist who is “really good at curly hair.” She is like, really pretty and smells nice. Her music is not loud and tastefully obscure. Her patterns are tame, and her colors are muted. She makes herself small by binding that unruly hair back in a tight bun. She is tastefully grey. Perfectly beige. She ends her emails with “warmly” and believes it disarms its recipient because she knows she is armed upon arrival with her skin, her lips, her thiccness. She orients herself to front. She is ready. She is familiar with every detail in the room before she makes herself known. She is the lack of her own personal space. She is the “no, no, you go ahead.” She changes the words in jokes depending on who she might offend. She’s always joking. A nervous laugh perfected to sound so natural. She is from a good home and knows how to keep one. She knows how important it is to maintain legibility. So as not to confuse and cost her good name, popularity, her street cred. And on the other side, she smokes and drinks to get drunk. She screams. 

Still, my tactics are weakening. Hasty, messy, and necessary. The veil is thin. But at least, I tell myself, as long as I am with something, I am not so alone.

Images: 1) Courtesy of Sean Yendrys. 2) Courtesy of Alex Rodabaugh. 3) Courtesy of Kennis Hawkins. 4) Leslie Cuyjet, With Marion, 2020. Detail 5 of 5.

Dance and Process is made possible with commissioning support from Marta Heflin Foundation; annual grants from Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and The Harkness Foundation for Dance; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.