"Is it going to be good?"
"What is good?"
"Is it going to matter?"
"What is matter?" I touch your arm
"We are matter. So if we are in it, it matters."
Way back in June, I got my first opportunity to share my own work with my Philadelphia community. Mascher Space's Fresh Juice festival is a Philly institution and it was awesome to perform alongside Margot Electra Steinberg, Christina Gesualdi, and Shizu Homma. As evidenced by my ArtDates project, I am a collaborator by nature, so even in a program titled Mostly New/Mostly Solos, I had two beautiful collaborators: Steve Weintraub and Janna Meiring. We even got covered by Kalila Kingsford-Smith in thINKingDANCE! I have video from the event that I need to find some time to look at and edit, but in the meantime, here's a great video montage of the whole event, descriptions of my pieces, and some thoughts on the process I wrote down back then.
"Klezmer Studies" by Steve Weintraub and Miryam Coppersmith
In this work in progress, we play with ways to move to Yiddish music, traditional and contemporary. Is there an instinctual way to dance Yiddishly?
"Tsror/Pebble" by Miryam Coppersmith
A solo inspired by the Jewish practice of placing stones on a tombstone when visiting a grave.
"Everything is in Progress" Janna Meiring and Miryam Coppersmith compose themselves, their bodies, and their thoughts on lineage, past, distance, and states of being.
Process Thoughts
This June is the first time I will be showing my own work, pretty much since college. It's a study in allowing for things to be not more or less than what they are. Creating work is like chewing cud for me, considering and deconstructing the stuff of my life and digesting it. I've changed a lot in the past four years and I have not been chewing the cud of all this change; I've not been performing my own work. Perhaps this is a start, or one of many starts. In any case, I'd love to see you there and hear your thoughts on what you see.
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