Through the Eyes of a Dancer: Selected Writings

Afterword

| 323 Afterword What follows was a spoken story for From the Horse’s Mouth in February 2010. I have been part of this roving framework several times since its inception in 1998. Masterminded by Tina Croll and Jamie Cunningham, the dance involves thirty or so performers. One at a time, they talk for a minute and a half while others dance in an improvised structure.This particular edition was held at the 92nd Street Y, and we were encouraged to include something about the Y in our stories. When I was five, my mother started a school for “creative dance” in our basement . One of the exercises was simply to sit on the floor and point and flex the feet. Point and flex, point and flex. Eventually my mother danced much less and I danced much more. She sometimes came to my concerts. Whenever I was moving around onstage, she was moving around too—bobbing and bouncing in the audience. It was embarrassing, and I secretly hoped she would stop coming to my shows. I got my wish, because she moved to Santa Fe for a few years. When she came back, what she really wanted to do was be a volunteer usher at the 92nd Street Y, because here is where she studied with Martha Graham on scholarship, many years ago. But by then, she had congestive heart failure. The last year of her life, she had trouble sleeping and sometimes hadn’t slept for days. Whenever I came to her place, though, I would stretch out on the floor and start my exercises, and she’d fall asleep right away. Two days before she died, she couldn’t talk, walk, see, or eat. She sat slumped in her wheelchair, hardly moving. I bent down and took hold of her left foot and moved it, saying “Point and flex, point and flex.” When I went to the right foot, she was ahead of me. She had already started moving it. Point and flex, point and flex. ...