black holes
black holes was the first public premiere of pateldanceworks in 2017, and the first work of the Ionosphere Triptych. This work asks us to respond to the notion that monsters have a soft spot, somewhere, always, and how we find that within our monstrous selves.
Premiered: September 20, 2017, SAFEhouse Arts
Premiered as part of SAFEhouse Arts Resident Artist Workshop
Collaborators:
Choreographer:
Bhumi B. Patel
Original Cast:
Bhumi B. Patel, Jordan Wanderer
Performed by:
Katherine House, Jordan Wanderer
Sound composition:
Rachel Austin
Lighting Design:
Colin Johnson
Costumes:
Bhumi B. Patel
Conceived of and choreographed by Bhumi B Patel and Jordan Wanderer, this duet is a meditation on the monsters within each of us. As an exploration of the growth and deterioration of a post-apocalyptic intimate relationship, the audience is invited to see the unseeable within each of us and trace our intimacies. Moving in circles, around and through one another, the two dancers find each other both within and without their orbits to settle once more and go softly into the unknown.
Monsters have one soft spot, somewhere, always.
- after Neil Gaiman
black holes | 2017
This is not an age of beauty
survival
surviving is an active declaration that you are choosing to keep living
surely that counts for something surely
something
somethings can be seen
somethings can be only felt. listen to the feeling.
listen listen listen
are you listening? How do you do?
Is my heart a muscle of blood or
is it a muscle of love?
something felt
something left. lost. loss.
grief, an old soul
grief, reincarnate
grief, the dying bees
grief in look, in touch, in taste
grief in surviving
are we ruined because we are surviving?
if we are ruined, what do we do?
we are surviving
we are ruined
we are self protecting
we are self sabotaging
there is a monster consuming us
or
maybe we are the monsters.
MAYBE WE ARE THE MONSTERS
there is room for the monsters to grieve
do not forget, dear monster, that your heart beats 100,000 times
a day
an earth day is relative. What is a day? Why is a day? Where else
is there a day?
take it away
take us away.
I want us, not something like us
there is only our ruined selves
surviving.
why do we choose this?
where are you now?
if no one is left to see us, and if it was once felt, and if it no
longer is, did it really happen?
I don’t know
can we go back? can we only go?
forward?
tell me
tell me
tell.
there is none of you
there is none of me
there is more of you
there is more of me
Please
whatever is or was matters
rebuild
you will not be the same
we will not be the same
if we were not ourselves, could we survive ruined?
we’re the monsters that will swallow this alive.
we are wild things
we are mortal beings
as we were
as we no longer are
as we will one day not be at all
where did we come from?
use this as a reminder that you are an outsider. We are
outsiders.
we are made to be bodies out of place
acceptance is a small quiet room.
written reflection on the piece
