Dance is part of my family history. My grandfather danced on the tables in the Ukraine; my mother was still prancing around to Paul Cebar at age 85. As for me, I think I was born dancing, or at least I have no plans to stop as long as I have feet that move to music. Actually, that's not true: we don't need feet to dance. My mother taught yoga to people in wheelchairs, so maybe I'll dance as long as my eye-balls bounce.
Over thirty years ago I started to
draw dancers. I liked the challenge of capturing the motion. And whether I'm dancing, drawing, or painting, for me dancing is going with the flow. The music tells my feet what to do, or the motion tells my brush where to move. So it's not surprising that the first real poem I wrote,
Yoruba Pygmies, was for a dancer, Clyde Morgan. I'd invited him to perform at a reading I was giving at the Jewish Community Center in 1984. He accepted my invitation on the condition I write something for him to dance to. It took months to write, he performed it only once, yet the poem changed my life. Jeff Poniewaz heard me read it and invited me to become one of the Earth Poets when he formed the group almost twenty years ago. That meant I had to keep on writing ecological performance poetry. That lead to my collaborating with other dancers, most frequently with Melanie Panush. Collaboration with dancers is perhaps in my genes. And it's in my future: My performances with DanceCircus take place on Friday, January 19, & Saturday, January 20, at 8 PM at the Humphrey Masonic Center, 790 North Van Buren, Milwaukee, General Admission: $15., Students and Seniors: $10.
Here's an excerpt from a poem I wrote for this event:
LIFE ON A LEDGE
We came from the water, now we're back again
Marching towards the border, where we may end
All life's trapped, in the space on the ledge
Ebbing, ebbing, ebbing towards the edge.
The ledge of the universe, edge of the universe
I know my puny verse, is unable to reverse
The trend
We're mere molecule, moving in galaxy
Yet every eye can see
We're rounding the bend
The water that's here
Is the water we've got
Water that's frozen
Melts when hot
Thaws, thaws, follows nature's laws
Held here by gravity, it's earth's through eternity
Life is not
Strapped in, trapped in, the space on the ledge
Ebbing, ebbing, ebbing towards the edge,
Edging edging, edging towards the eddy
Sea levels rising, yet we don't seem ready
To act in concert to stem what we've begun
Still in denial of the damage done
We came from the water, now we're back again
Marching towards the border, where we may end,
All life's trapped, in the space on the ledge
Ebbing, ebbing, ebbing towards the edge.
© 2006, Suzanne Rosenblatt
