TREE HUGGER - STILL DANCE
ON LOOKING BACK Eurydice and Orpheus (7 min)
Orpheus was a star. He was the Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West of Greek Mythology. He and his wife Eurydice love one another. She steps on a snake and dies. The Gods offer to bring her back to life. If only men could follow directions.
MEN COME MEN GO from W.B.YEATS (4 min)
A book of poetry by W.B. Yeats fell off a shelf in the library at Conn. College in 1980 and landed at Wall Matthews’ feet. Wall and Ara collaborated on Words for Music Perhaps bringing Wall’s original music and Ara’s choreography and performance to stages including Dance Theatre Workshop and The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 2015 the work was revived for The Dance Place in Washington, DC. With the passing decades, it seems we understand more about love, loss and the spiritual life that Yeats addresses through the character of Crazy Jane. In 2016 it was performed at EAT (Emerging Artists) Theatre Festival in NYC (where friends asked when we would finally stop emerging). In the summer of 2019, Peter Cunningham and I set out to make a different film, but when we scouted the location of an abandoned fish factory, he remembered two lines from Crazy Jane on God which became the inspiration for this film. 1) I had wild Jack for a lover. 2) All things remain in God. In this time of pandemic, the film seems to resonate, it seems to evoke mourning for the passing of our wild lives as we are simultaneously offered the embrace an unknown future.
LOVE LETTERs 1917-PETER’S GRANDFATHER TO PETER’S GRANDMOTHER
DANCING WITH TREES - A Petchakutcha performed live 2/19/22 for a worldwide audience
The Invisible Circus of the Present tense - performed live 3/16/22
