WAITING
October 3-6, 2024
Above performance photos by the fabulous Evan Ingalls!
Red is my favorite color. Not sure when my interest in a red dress began but an early memory from 2001 comes to mind. Ian Bivins, then a student in the theatre department at WWU, asked if I would work with him on this senior project. I agreed as long as I could wear a red dress as my costume. I was joking. He agreed. So I did. Here is a picture of the poster:
I tell my students they need to dance like they are wearing a red dress: someone who walks through the world in a red dress is seen. There is something to that kind of presence and confidence that is powerful. Falling in a mud puddle in sweats while crossing the street is one thing, but falling in a mud puddle while crossing the street in a red dress is something else entirely. And then getting up, wringing out your clothes, and walking along is REALLY something. That is what I tell the students in my class....they need to fall in a mud puddle while wearing their red dress. They need to be seen.
POSTER PHOTOGRAPHY BY @FOTOMATAIO
I don't own a red dress. I joke about owning one. I often tell my family that I am going to go buy one. I almost owned one - my wedding dress. Ultimately it didn't happen. In 2018 I wrote the only poem I have ever written, This Color, about that almost red wedding dress. Here is it:
THIS COLOR
This was supposed to be red.
That is the color I wanted to wear.
Not because of some rule, but because my favorite color is red.
I told my mom that my dress was going to be red.
She cried, so it was this color.I was seven months pregnant when my dad waltzed me down the aisle in this color.
People cried.
My dad and I didn’t cry. We focused on our steps. We needed to stay smooth.
He dropped me off with Mark and his daughters, who were in lavender, their favorite color.He and I shared ideas.
We promised we wouldn’t ask each other to change.
We also told each other things we liked about the other person. I told him I liked when he brushed my hair when I was sick. He told me he liked my extreme expression, my highs and my lows.
We both cried.I wore a red dress as a costume once.
I loved that dress and saved it for years. It doesn’t fit anymore. I recently gave it away.
That is the only red dress I have ever owned.I tell my students they need to be brave…they need to dance as if they are wearing a red dress.
I tell them to be seen.
It is risky to wear a red dress. If you fall down in that dress everyone will notice. I tell them they need to be willing to fall down in a red dress.I wear black, almost every day.
This color actually hangs in my closet with all my other clothes, my black clothes, like it is an option for Tuesday.
So jump to now and this piece Waiting. I woke up sometime late spring with an image of women sitting on a bench waiting. That was it. These women were just sitting on a bench waiting, nothing else. I didn't think much of it...but then it wouldn't go away. This image kept popping into my mind. I started to see it all the time. Eventually the women showed up in red. It was the arrival of these women in their red dresses that helped me realize this is supposed to be a dance....so here we are....a new dance piece about these women on that bench, waiting, in their red dresses.
I'll tell you...we have discovered that waiting is a lot of things but it certainly isn't about doing nothing. Fourteen women ages 12-75 have shared in length what they are waiting for, what they have seen other women waiting for, how they wait, what it feels like to wait, and what waiting looks like.
POSTER PHOTOGRAPHY BY @FOTOMATAIO