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| Photo courtesy of Otterbein University |
A Story From the Life of Kathy B.
Ghostwritten by Gabrielle A.
Mirrors
Art mirrors life and life mirrors art, even if we don’t plan for it. Many of the greatest works of art seem to start at low points in our lives, as the works grow and improve, life follows suit.
When I was in my earlier years of teaching college students, I had taken a job teaching dance at a small liberal arts college. I had the opportunity to work with students who had a new piece of technology. They had laid track work beneath the stage, and a small platform would move along the track work. Shaped like a hexagon, it had a raised portion in the center that could hold two people. It was brand new, and full of glitches, but worth the risk to work with such a technological maverick.
The night of the performance, I sat right up by the stage. The air was cold, and the room was pitch black, but I could sense the immense size and openness of the room. The music from the last performance had cut out, leaving the space uncomfortably silent, like the pause in a conversation with an old acquaintance whom you never really liked. The springs of the chairs creaked as I shifted around, like they were trying to lift me up out of my seat. The floor beneath me was concrete, and I could hear the rustle of show programs as they slipped out of hands and across the floor. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, my feet swept the concrete, making soft whispering sounds. My arms bumped the woman next to me on the armrest, and I silently prayed she wouldn’t turn to glare at me.
We didn’t have the actual piece of technology for most of the rehearsals; we just had students physically moving a box around as a stand in. When we finally started rehearsing with the hexagonal unit moving on its own, we were always sitting on pins and needles wondering whether or not it would work.
Thuds of dancers’ feet wended the stage. The curtains had been drawn back at the start of the show, and if I looked hard enough I could almost see the soft shadowy bodies against the darkness. I kept bouncing my leg, and the springs kept groaning.
Bright lights then beamed down, revealing eight posed bodies, like illuminated garden statues. Dressed in blues and greys, shirts and pants, as if in the darkness they had been pulled from the audience to perform.
The music came on, but even if it hadn’t, my heart might have drummed loud enough to replace it. A few low strings rang through the theater; singular, shooting off like a prized race horse. The other instruments joined as if they were trying to outrun the first. They were fast, low, and ominous. The music alone was compelling enough to claim the attention of the theater.
Dancers reached through the tips of their fingers, dragged their feet, and their whole bodies told the stories. In my choreography, the dancers were to jump onto the hexagonal box, perform, then jump off. Much less precarious on paper then it was in the theater. The first dancer leapt to it, and I half expected the box to cave in, but it glided nearly as gracefully as she did. She looked regal as she stood above the other dancers, making it clear she was the lead.
The box didn’t move her through the stage so much as it did through time. The box slid around the stage, and she moved through her life path as electronically controlled plexiglass panels formed over her. They created a window for others to look through, but trapped her. When I created the dance, I wanted to use it to express myself, even if I wasn’t performing. At the time, I felt like everyone I knew believed they could peer into my life and know everything about me. Everyone was making their own judgements and the gossip mill was running wild. The dancer on stage, encased by glass, reflected the trapped feeling that all the gossip in my life had given me.
The final panels began their ascent, and I thought my heart had tired itself out. Then, even over the loud, deep string, I heard the sound of one of the final panels loud and clear.
It groaned.
It creaked.
It was at the wrong angle.
As if the whole stage was trying to correct it, the sound of whirring mechanics just about overwhelmed the music. I wanted to just shout “Stop!” and run up on stage to try to fix it, but I couldn’t do a thing. One wrong step, and a dancer could break the whole panel. Around and around the dancers went, on and off the hexagon. I shifted in my seat as the dancer atop the box shifted her weight. I could hardly tell if the creaking noise was my seat or the stage.
The other dancers slowed, turning all their attention to the hexagon. The final panel of plexiglass formed them all into fishbowl, slightly wonky, but a fishbowl. The other dancers watched, passed their judgments; she reached the peak, the point if her life where she had no escape.
Dancers returned to stone, their spotlights fading with the music. I couldn’t believe we had pulled it off. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but life and art are perfect mirrors. I was terrified of all of the things that could go wrong on the night of the performance, but as I overcame those fears, slowly my deeper fears and anxieties from my personal life began to resolve with it. Although it’s been years, I haven’t stopped using my art to work through my fears, and I doubt I ever will.
