If you have found yourself here, you may freely write your comments regarding our latest dance/theatre/video work, "The Origami Party/It's a motherf*****r...being here without you."

History of "Origami.../Mother..." is based on a (sort of) true story of three siblings coming to terms with the death of their mother. With theatrical mayhem, the siblings sift through absurdity and grief and everywhere in between. This work of dance-theater is co-directed by Jobaris with Lucas Allen and features a new electro-acoustic composition by Allen. Film collaboration with Jessica Jobaris and Luke Allen. Performers/co-creators: Luke Allen,Tasa Gleason,and Cathleen O'Malley.
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A new work is in the works. "The Origami Party"
We begin today, rehearsing in a field. The project is based on "weathering." Weathering the vessel, the mind, the emotional plateaus..in the hopes of creating a Radical Theatre work. Endurance as a path to implosion, this new performance will be a justifiable collision of campfire/divorce/sibling rivalry/ murder/grief/sitcom sort of...THING.
I'm sinking my teeth into Agency of Fate. See where theatre's history can commence a raucous new exploration, internally. But we're taking this one on the road, so geographical exploration will up the ante. Look for our tour dates in Seattle,Vancouver, NYC, and, fingers crossed,Edinburgh.

SO now I've been blogging for only a few months, but I have to admit...
I am curious as to what the hell I am doing here.
Is this an art reference blog?
Is this a hey, I'm a human too, blog?
Is this a way for me to communicate beyond an audience I may personally know?
This blogging thing has got my panties in a bunch. I'm derailing my efforts to be here, and want to really just write.
So I'm asking myself to do nothing to give myself (or anyone reading this) a truly formed answer to what or why I am doing this, because , in reality, the inevitability of change superceeds any of my intentions, and I like life this way. Unknown, tolerant, and yet seeking.

The Night and Death
Tonight,
Old man was like our own darkest aspect shining

He had a narrative, created by the thick density of time,
and more often than not, talked to the air as if it was dirty.

Gathering and holding
Gathering and turning
Until standing still
Until finally swallowing the last light of day,
he begged for a roll of paper, to scroll his life on, his farming years and mortal hands doubtless of his touch right...here.
Harvesting his Oncoming, he concieved anecdotes made from Greek and Italian corpses.
His identity, lost in them,
and
We,
lost
in him.
It was as if we sensed at once, our scary substance of insubsantiability,
swallowed by our own darkest aspects shining.
He, with his scroll
while we tether the time, building night and
holding Death
in place.

Bainbridge, the Penninsula, July 3rd,
and damn,
what a fine day for a BBQ..
and Eagle interrupts our heated game of volleyball.

Avenue A, Cafe Sophie's
and the moon couldn't be brighter...
in my gin.

Phoebe's
Williamsburg,
Brooklyn

This is where the listless go...

Amsterdam was fairly kind, despite the grad school audition.
Even a light degree of misinformation can lead you far from the internal home.
Steadfast the vision. It came back. I came back. With a greater sense of not knowing.
European dancemaking....there is more to it than the intellectuals.
Thinking is only one end of the spectrum for making art...
there is also intuition/recieving from the unnameable.
Allowing the confluence of matter and ideas play out.
There is validity in searching in this manner for creativity,
and in general.

WIDE BRAIN.
The world needs us to get WIDE BRAINed.
Frontal heat pointing thinker, disengage.
Feel the weight of your brain from the back of your skull,
let this weight of your mass lull around. Work from this place.
It is not the same kind of working, is it...

NYC
Well arrived, ready for some face plants on a bed. Long flight. Not as long as what I've gotten used to, trans-atlantic style, nevertheless, they don't feed you on airplanes anymore...I suppose this is really a blessing. But if I eat another bag of f***ing peanuts....
Only home here for 9 days, but schlepping has a new definition. Beso's in Brooklyn, greeted our dance company with margarita's and a really long supper table to fit us ...a good start.

The humid petrol air is welcomed on my Seattle bones. This time of year is what I remember best. 1995 . The Martha Graham School, the space between us hopefuls occupied by the dense body heat radiating off of us.
NY has always been a familiar stranger from the moment I set foot here to study dance at 20. 11 years later, I cheerily wrestle with this long term affair. Either way, it beckons me every 2 years or so, and I heed its irresistible call. Surely there are many artists who, non-committal in calling NY home, still thrive, working here on a project to project basis. It's quite possibly,the best way to keep both fires burning. The more geographical tension in my life, longing for greener grasses, the more fruitful my idea of WORLD is, the more generative my ideas become. HERE, here, or here. Location as a mental expansion tool, and imagination generator.
Like a mother scolding then embracing her child for going' missing, NY is taking me in, if only for a titch. I'm sure by the tour's end, she'll be kicking me out, again. Somehow, this old standard we exchange, is rather comforting, in it's predictability. It's our little ceremony.

I've been thinking about restraint lately. The kind that is individual and universal. Internal discipline for the self and external discipline, reactions to the world. Little world, big world.

For me, it isn't easy to discipline, but once the aim has taken momentum, it changes everything. I am a daydreamer. It is crucial to me to daydream daily, intentionally I alpha state myself (useful tool for choreography). So earlier this month, I daydreamt that I could literally cease thinking erratically/habitually. I decided I'd try just for kicks to check my cynism (I'm too young to be cynical) so I am restraining myself from general negative thoughts. Disciplining the mind, not through control, but unjudgemental surrendering. It's like an active meditation. The solo, sitting meditation is useful preparation, but it is the action of opening up to moments of spontaneous response that transforms moments into LIVING meditation.
This has me looking at the world very differently. Now I am just feeling baby shifts, and all the while the vultures still enter in, the daily suffering continuum. (It's not like I consciously said, I don't want to suffer anymore," that's just impossible). Somehow, I'd become bored, just BORED of living life in the same way, in my mind. Having the same thoughts recur about the same things. I also started more teaching. That will give one discipline, because if you don't have your own, then you cannot give it to your students. Dancing requires an abundance of both discipline and daydreaming. I think most corporations would benefit from mandatory daydreaming siestas for their employees.
This experiment may only be a few weeks old, but the capacity to deliver the opposite reaction to absurd life moments is gaining hold over the usual habitual reaction. This allows for events to unfold with a wild sense of unpredictability.
And this is very amusing.
I think it is important to reinvent one's approach to the world (consciousness), otherwise, I find it more difficult anyway to try to maintain that which I know. Or think I know. Because those things change anyway, without my consent, usually.

What is it to LIVE anyway? Do we ask ourselves enough, or even too much: How are we LIVING? What does that mean? To live? Are we in control? Are we surrendering? Are we in conflict between the two? How is a human really ALIVE with their LIVING?
The intention of purely asking these questions has me aware that I am still a woman in search for the cosmic drop of meaning, but am capable to surrenering up to the designs of an incomprehensible universe of chaos. Mostly, I just summon a curiousity, that usually sets me out of my fear. I want to play with life. Play with it. P L A Y .

In either case,
It's a peaceful night here. Sunset is lasting a long while. The blue is just
finishing leaving.
I think I'll sleep early tonight...outside on my porch. Pretend I am homeless. When my husband goes out to try to find me, he'll trip over my sleeping bag, maybe offer me some food or throw me on the street, not knowing who I am. What would be his expression when my head turtled out of the bag?