Throw me around, make me chase
Dance, art as love explained, finding connection through honest expression
Shades of darkness
broken,
by beams of painted light.
reds and blues
stretch across space.
I am lost.
Hidden behind acetate lenses.
My eyes no longer work,
but for some reason,
within my blindness,
I see you.
Scattered faces,
blinded,
intermittent moments of clarity.
do you see me too?
I can’t fathom.
it’s too much,
or not enough.
The trail of your movements
etched onto me.
why can’t I move,
move like you?
I try.
Maybe you’ll see.
Thoughts emerge.
what if they see,
what if they judge?
I begin,
a fall,
my feet in tar,
yours on cloud.
I feel heavy.
oh,
to be so light.
a breath escapes.
Not tonight.
Lost,
I release.
back to the music,
I lose you to the night.
My eyes close,
all I hear is the sound around me,
it feels good.
the image of you fades,
painted over
by beams of light
that float over me
asleep.
My body moves,
I follow,
lost,
but here.
Time dissolved.
Only now.
Whatever I once saw, I am.
a smile,
of sorts,
creeps
out of my stomach.
This is enough.
I realise I’ve gone,
gone somewhere else.
I escape.
Once more,
I look around
the crowd.
This is fun.
hands outstretched,
a shoal in unison.
together,
The cool breeze floats above us
relief.
I feel it.
a gaze.
our eyes meet,
and
I know.
it is real.
I am seen.
The dance has begun.
the push.
the pull.
the endless knowledge,
or lack thereof,
of unity.
I see you.
closer,
pirouettes of emotion.
the crowd splits,
gravity takes hold.
we are here.
no voices.
don’t ruin it.
what can’t be said
shouldn’t.
the feeling is real.
don’t sully it.
hands touch.
safety.
danger.
enough to never know.
I want you closer.
scared,
you close the gap.
I feel secure.
I move too,
and you slide away.
not as easy as I want.
but maybe
that’s not
what I want.
that pull,
that hidden cord,
tight
around the throat
of who I was.
I am lost.
beyond desire
oh to be light,
show me how.
I won’t change
my mind drifts to you.
it is always drifting
to you.
obsessed,
I can’t look away.
Time dissolved
Only you.
seconds into minutes,
minutes into days.
to and fro,
pulled.
the crowd has gone.
just us,
I can’t stop.
I chase.
I pull.
every move,
an exchange of power.
I lead.
you follow.
I stumble.
you fall.
but still,
the dance continues.
our feet grew up in different places.
we’re learning the steps.
sometimes me,
sometimes you.
The more we dance,
the more we know.
I want to dance like this forever.
how long has it been?
countless falls,
no longer stepping
on each other’s toes.
almost
routine.
a performance.
moves in sequence.
![Sharon Eyal [FRA] | Into The Hairy - Dansens Hus](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Cb3k!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff375e4eb-84e8-4b6b-8c52-caa73c051179_1937x1271.webp "Sharon Eyal [FRA] | Into The Hairy - Dansens Hus")
but one part
we can’t get past,
a fall I’m used to.
my breath escapes me.
a break.
I look,
I realise,
I’ve been dancing,
dancing for so long,
I forgot anyone was watching.
We are apart
The crowd appears
I no longer see you
but I know.
How I found you last
Close my eyes
and move again.
and in that moment
I know
The price of being seen:
Never to dance the same again.
Dance
Dance
The base of it all.
I have a lot of love for dance. I owe it everything.
I had a tough time at school, but my first form tutor gave me a lifeline: dance.
He’d help me get to classes, and while I was getting kicked out of art class and spray-painting skateboards and tees, dance was a place I could find myself.
It helped me place myself in space, understand where I was.
There’s nowhere to hide in dance.
At times it is collaborative, synchronised bodies moving through their own pain to find a balance for the viewers, often themselves alone.
It gave me a language, a way to understand the push and pull of the world.
I still have it. There are few greater delights in London than finding a show that pulls me away from paintings and concepts into rapture.
We all dance.
Whether we want to or not, the push and pull of connection is just a modern abstraction of it.
We see moves we like, we mimic, copy, hoping to have the same effect.
Did we really want to dance with them, or simply have what they have?
We can’t talk about movement in relation to another body without talking about power. Reach.
When two physical bodies relate to one another, there is communication.
A perfect signal is rare in the wild; there’s too much noise.
Maybe we get it for a split second, but the reality is that often we are just trying to be heard.
Understanding dance is understanding that conversation.
With paint, we have time. And the better the wall, the more the time.
Often in art, the defining factor is the environment, not the art.
The same may be true of dance.
But when we break it down, there is a much clearer route to understanding humanity.
A finite number of moves, simplified: pace, velocity, position, eye contact.
The emotions laid out.
The tension between the dancers.
Even when abstracted, they are plain to see.
Terpsichore
T (Terpsichore (I)) has been sitting above my desk for about a year now. I enjoy being around her.
She reminds me of how far this project has taken me, of how far I’ve come.
She was the first muse I tried to encapsulate in paint. I’ve always loved Kandinsky’s writing, and to see someone move, to feel it, is something you can’t forget.
Human connection is a dance.
It’s in our nature.
We are animals, and what society has raised into an art form remains a basic building block of how we survive as a species.
To find love is to find a dancing partner (and one must not confuse the order).
the push and pull
the back and forth
the conflict of language
I find a lot of solace in that.
In dance.
I spent a lot of time growing up with people who spoke different languages from me.
I don’t like noise, and I couldn’t see very well, so movement became important for me to understand the world.
It helped me communicate.
Because it transcends boundaries
which I think is what art is trying to do
at its most authentic.
but that’s for later…
Terpsichore is the Muse of dance, often regarded as the senior member of the Muses.
In some traditions, she’s described as the mother of the Sirens.
When I imagine her, I like to think how dance spills into danger.
Movement seduces as much as it liberates, and the Sirens inherit her gift of rhythm twisted into song.
Part grace, part lure.
What begins as honest expression becomes authentic power.
A chorus for art through the years
Terpsichore represents both
The innocence of dance and the shadow of its consequence.
Art?
Life is complex.
But maybe we’re the ones overcomplicating it.
Maslow spelled it out, but somewhere in there
he forgot how lonely it is
to climb up and down his mountain.
Knowing where you are,
maybe that’s what it’s all about.
Reassurance that we exist.
To be seen.
To be felt.
To be safe.
So why this feeling?
Why must we express ourselves in ever-evolving ways?
Because we have something to say,
from a new location.
Art is an honest expression of a unique perspective.
That is all.
Love is the same.
Its survival depends on the connection built around that expression.
The paths we take in life give us unique ways of speaking,
and the places we end up give us common ground.
But just because we’re at the McDonald’s drive-thru together
doesn’t mean we’re ordering the same meal.
We need different things.
We see different things.
And the way we connect varies.
To be in a position where what we’re experiencing can’t be said in common language requires art,
a new form of communication.
It may play on old forms (derivative or not, depending on the abstraction),
but the honesty in the need to speak is what makes it art.
Just like love.
It lives in the honesty of expression.
A good piece of art, like a good relationship,
can only be known from the inside,
from those who are experiencing it.
Those outside will always have their view.
But if it shows you something you need to see,
then it is real.
Whether it is good for you to keep looking,
that is another question.
Because honesty,
like art,
is true.
Poets Corner
Untitled Terpsichore
An old friend of mine from ballet days
She teaches at the Hammond School
Reassures me that the best dancers
Are the bad dancers – the ones who cannot dance
But do. They do not worry to see
Themselves through the eyes
Of who may or may not be watching.
Those bizarre movers that take
Random occupations of space
Allowing the body full control.
Slightly off
Pure souls
The beat.
With two left feet.
I say they make an awful sight
From the safety of my stool
Shouting over at the tender
Ordering a double to get me moving
Asking her: ‘How do you pronounce
Terpsichore?’
- Thomas May
Final Words
It’s always a dance.
We connect.
We vanish.
We see them again.
And the more times it fails,
the less likely we are to engage.
But the real bravery is in trying again.
Connection, like art, is hard.
Some people make it look easy
maybe they had a good dance teacher.
If you’re learning to dance at the moment,
my favourite lesson was this:
“Don’t worry about falling over.
If you do it enough,
one day you’re going to enjoy it.”
p.s. I’ve been drawing a lot lately. If you’re on the subscription and getting letters atm, I’ll probably send you a letter and a drawing this month.
If you want to get on the list, subscribe and send your address over so I can post it out next week.