dno dances

I am obsessed with balance.

Or, more specifically, I am obsessed with the struggle to maintain overall physical equilibrium and how, in order to do so, one must embrace a thousand micro-imbalances.

In order to stand on releve (the ball of your foot), especially on one leg, for any length of time, you’ve got to release the idea of “finding your balance”. As soon as you find that still point, it moves a little to left. So, balance feels like it is always an instant ahead of where you are. Tiny adjustments in the body’s architecture compensate for these shifts like the joints on a suspension bridge. A vertebra might compress a bit on the right, or the left shoulder might lift a hair.

In a state of balance the body is vibrating with movement, and its all of the most unaffected, uncontrollable, absolutely honest kind… because that’s how the body reacts when its given an all consuming task.

This is why, in my own choreography, I often find myself in the most precariously cantilevered positions. As a performer, you cannot “fake” a balance, and you cannot “perfect” one either. You can’t fake it because if you fall over, well, that’s obviously not a balance. You can’t perfect it, because as I stated before, equilibrium is really a state of constantly shifting imbalances and asymmetries. Since the two qualities which most interest me in dance are honesty and effort, then balancing seems to be a great place to begin. At those most tenuous points, I have no choice but to simply exist.