ArtDate 18: Danielle

I've been emotionally under water this week, deeply leaning on the support of my friends while a torrent of new and old sadnesses, insecurities, and fears have washed over me. Repeatedly.

The amazing thing about creating structures is that, when I can show up for them, they also show up for me. Repeatedly.

So, I showed up for this ArtDate with Danielle Levsky and Danielle and our ArtDate showed up for me.

When Danielle got in touch while she was thinking of moving to Philadelphia, I felt an immediate spark of excitement and recognition reading about her work as a post-Soviet Jewish clown, storyteller, and teacher. We didn't manage to meet in person during that exchange, but she got back in touch last month now as a Philly resident. That same week I heard someone read a beautiful, Jewish, witchy poem at House Poet and behold! It was Danielle. In the flesh! We made plans to have an ArtDate together.

Danielle's life this month is full of preparing two shows, War and Play and The Crone Chronicles for PhysFestNYC in January. We both felt ready to embrace the no-expectations, no responsibility, open play space of our ArtDate.

We started warming up solo and then found each other in improvisation, quickly finding many intriguing games together.

We bounced back and forth on our knees, keeping time an trading off little solos of sounds, funny faces, and movements.

Danielle drummed an exquisite percussion solo on the windowpane while I danced to the rhythm.

And we finished as is traditional, with a thigh-slapping rendition of the MGM opening theme.

Picking out all of these moments and describing them, as delightful as they were, doesn't capture the deep joy of making eye contact with another performer and feeling them feeling out what comes next- that juicy moment before something takes shape (which is of course impossible to capture).

We shared a desire to make something that had a shape, so we spread out some books we had brought with us (I bought 4 this week #selfcare) and picked out three phrases from three different books. We played with these texts in movement and made this sketch! It felt refreshing to go with the next thought and build something together. Here's a video of what we made. The texts are linked under the video.

https://youtu.be/PVyDBPAjGDE?si=F4VrbJBIX58ag8k5

Texts we used:

Time is A Mother by Ocean Vuoung

You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake by Anna Moschovakis

The Abundance-Scarcity Paradox by Kenwyn K. Smith

Thanks to Danielle for playing! I'm really looking forward to continuing to move, experiment, and discover together.