Performance Shots

Performance shots fill my photo albums from the early 80s. 

Drew, sitting upright on my shoulders, lean body straight forward and face turned profile, arms outstretched with fingertips just touching Fay's. She mirrors him, matching his energy and posture atop Janet's shoulders. They are looking into each other's eyes. Janet and I, staring straight ahead, arms also spread horizontal with fingertips touching, stand strong and thrust our weight up out of our feet. In the square window of space between our bodies, Jenifer hangs Judy upside down from legs locked around her shoulders. Judy's hair brushes the floor, and at that moment in the dance, "Traveling Songs," her lone voice can almost be heard, calling out from deep in a cave. Lighting from the sides of that downtown loft performance space etch the contours of our faces and bodies with sculptural precision. Our costumes: multi-hued, form-fitting, unisex jumpsuits. Composer/musician Ted Kalman has collaborated with us in structuring the improvised songs we sing as we dance. 

Drew, solemn in a neck to ankle burlap robe preparing to go onstage in a dour production of a medieval mystery play. This picture he sent to me from Vienna where he was performing, while I was across the Alps in Aix-en-Provence dancing in a Baroque opera, part of the summer music festival there. After Drew's show closed, he came to Aix to see my last performances. From there, we rented a car and took the ferry to the mediterranean island of Corsica for an adventurous vacation week. We drove through countless picturesque coastal villages without taking pictures, camped on the beach or sometimes slept out on the rocks at the edge of the Mediterranean to avoid the mosquitos, bought raw goat's milk cheese from a farmer's roadside truck filling the car with a stink so bad we couldn't close the windows even two days after jettisoning the cheese. 

Drew, in a cream colored, high collared robe with matching regal turban, vamping imperiously for the camera while the long train from his turban is slung over my shoulder. I am standing next to him in street clothes--a blue and white striped sweater and red jacket, patience mixed with exhaustion on my round face, perplexed eyes framed by my dark curls. I've come to Vienna to support him through the last days of the production, although neither of us is quite sure why or even if I am being any help at all. It just seemed like a fun idea for me to come there rather than return directly to the US after I finished yet another summer Baroque dance gig in Aix. 

Drew, naked except for a wide swath of sheer, iridescent turquoise fabric draped across his body, gold sandals tied to his carefully placed feet, gold crown balanced precariously atop gold spray-painted hair and skin. Was he singing Apollo, or Zeus, or some other god who flies in from above to save the hero at the end of the opera? The scanty costume is stretching the authenticity of the supposedly period-correct costuming of this production, but surely tantilizing to the director. When Drew tells me about the whole ill-fated event, I just chuckle. "Did you think that director could resist the chance to visually enhance the dramatic climax with the inspiration of a heavenly body. It's rare in the opera world for singers to have svelt, sexy bodies like yours." 

Drew, in high-contrast black and white, on stage during dress rehearsal at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City. Deep shadows are etched in his smooth, confident face, caught by a stark overhead spot. His wide patchwork robe--fake fur ruff around the neck and sleeves and cuffs rimmed in wide, sparkly embroidery--scatters the light all around him in a milky way of stars. He is Aslan, the mystical lion from my Narnia series of danced songs, humming, sighing, speaking and singing the soaring electronic score into existence. In this piece, my third collaboration with composer Geoffrey Wright, Drew and I had worked out every detail together--how he began in dark, how the music and light and his gestures grew organically out of those first, creative roars of pleasure, how he gradually covered the stage and then the audience with his song till the place shimmered with presence. 

Drew, on stage in his breakout debut performance in the title role of Handel's "Orlando"--red knee-length tunic tied at the waist with a gold sash, gold high-heel shoes with bows on the toes, shoulder length blond wig trying hard to aspire to the period style, and the upturned gesture of his hand a perfect imitation of a famous portrait of Louis XIV. I'd been coaching him from the back of the house, and also in our nightly rehashing of rehearsals back in our hotel room. Although he had no need of musical help--he had worked out all the phrasing and embellishments months before with his voice teacher and the production's musical director--he still valued my stage sense to suggest ways the positioning and gestures could better support the dramatic meaning, my sharp ears listening for the balance with the orchestra, and my devoted eyes that assured him he looked as good as he sounded.