Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

For three weeks I was immersed, drawing dancers as Margo
Sappington taught the Milwaukee Ballet her new work, COMMON PEOPLE. She was
patient, supportive, open  to
modifying her choreography in accordance with a dancer’s strengths and
weaknesses. As in any work of art, the details could not show me the whole,
especially as envisioned by Margo. And as much as I loved the individual
sections, the whole was a mind-blower! The costumes, the use of light, the
explosive color, combined with Shatner’s words, the insight, the humor, the varying moods, I really couldn’t see it till I
saw it.  Ahead of time, Adolph said
he’d go with me once; this afternoon will be his third time, for it’s the sort
of work you can see over and over again, and see something new every time. We
dragged two of our grandsons last night, one six years old, the other almost
nine, both in a state of constant complaint until Margo’s dance began.  Then even they were mesmerized. The
older one said afterwards, “That was more like a rock dance than a ballet.”  Too bad I’ve been too busy to write
this sooner! You have three hours left to go to the last performance.

Helen Ceci, my voice teacher, once said to me, “What? You never heard of a neck warmer?” “Well,” I told her, “I grew up in New Jersey where people didn’t have to worry about keeping their necks warm.” She made me a neck warmer! And now, whenever I wear one, I think of her.

Our first visit to Shorewood, in 1966, was to see Danny Pierce, a printmaker in the UWM Art Department. Danny had lived in Alaska for several years. Here I was dreading Wisconsin winters, and he had lived in a climate with temperatures of 75 below. I couldn’t imagine how he had coped. So he told me. He always kept the hood of his parka extended well beyond his face, which locked in a layer of warm air. I’ve thought of that a lot these days, every time I step out of the house.

About thirty years ago I took swimming lessons from Georgia Nelson at the Shorewood Pool. Her advice about breathing was similar to Danny’s cold weather suggestion. When doing the crawl, turn your head to the side, halfway submerged. That creates an air pocket so you can breathe easily without swallowing a mouthful of water. That air pocket helped me through years of swimming every day just as the air parka has helped me through forty years of Wisconsin winters.

When I make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, I think of our son Joshua; when I cook with a bamboo steamer, I think of our daughter-in-law Pauline. Almost evverything I do connects me to specific people. It’s similar to walking through Shorewood, where I’ve lived for over 37 years: every block has a house or two with its history, people come and gone, or still here. The richness of life is a matter of layers, the people we’ve known for minutes or years. And I'm glad I know that keeping warm is a matter of layers, though I don't remember who taught me that.

2/1/07 If it looks like a bus from the distance, that doesn’t mean it will look like a bus up close. Especially since both benches were already empty when I got here two minutes late for the #15. That means I’ll miss at least the first half hour of drawing Margot Sappington setting her latest dance for the Milwaukee Ballet. Still, I keep peering down Oakland Avenue, hoping to see a bus, as I write in my little notebook. Huh? Here’s a bus! Is it the last one, arriving late, or the next one, arriving early? Oh, it’s already 12:01. I guess I lost track. It’s the next one, right on time.

I’ve known Margot for over thirty years, and have done hundreds of drawings of her setting her dances (teaching the choreography) and of the performances, both here and in New York. But I haven’t used my Chinese brushes since the last time Margot was in town to set Virgin Forest. So this morning I was on an ink hunt. Only one kind of ink, Higgins Eternal Black, responds to paper the way I want it to, with a wispy dry brush stroke that captures the energy of movement. I finally found an old, still unopened bottle. Then it was a brush hunt for the right Chinese brushes, then a pad hunt, but will I still be able to do this after years of using only a pen?

“It’s gonna get cold out,” says a small man with a bushy white beard to a woman he may or may not know. “Sub-zero.” She silently nods. Now an old man talks to the same woman about his doctor’s appointment, then gets off.

The TV overhead gives the exact time, the location of the bus, and the latest news, weather report, and bits of environmental information. Thousands are protesting a surge in tortilla prices in Mexico City. Are the prices surging in Orizaba, too, where my sister lives? Surge is a popular word these days.

Now another man is talking to that woman. She seems to be a magnet for the lonely.

2/3/07 I never draw dancers when they’re posing, only when they’re moving, and Margot’s dancers are moving in every sense of the word. Watching her set Common People, I suddenly was feeling the electricity, even though the dancers are still in the learning stage, and I picked up my brush and began to draw where I’d left off years ago.