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| Paul Taylor's "Eventide" (Laura Halzack, James Samson, Michelle Fleet, and me) - 2008 rehearsal - |
I recently read a Substack blog post titled "What Uncle Barry Taught Me About Naming". The author muses about her memories and experiences with Barry Moncrieffe, a long time icon of Jamaican dance and culture, who passed away in 2020. I too knew "Uncle Barry", a moniker of affection often used in reference to Mr. Moncrieffe by many who were not family.
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| Barry Moncrieffe (1970s in performance). Photo: Maria LaYacona - copied from Facebook - |
As I read the article, I remembered the multitudes of people who influenced my development as a dancer and as an artist and as a person, most of whom never knew the extent of their impact on me. I was honored to know and be recognised by Uncle Barry throughout my life whenever I was home in Jamaica, and about fifteen years ago I did tell him how much his performances and teaching meant to me when I was a youngster growing up.
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| Woven tapestry inspired by Gustav Klimt painting - copied from online post - |
However, my momentary thoughts are imagining myself (and anyone) as a tapestry that is woven from distinctive threads that represent individual people (whom we may or may not have ever met), and who add color and dimension to my unique place in the world. A tapestry weaves myriad threads to form a piece of art in which it can be impossible to trace the role a single strand might play, and still each thread holds it together and makes it unique. If each thread were a person in our life... then where we intersect is how we become more than just a single thread. And still each "thread" has its own beginning and end, its own "lifespan".The joy and privilege of human intelligence is that our imagination is not bound by the physical world, or even our mortal existence. Art is one way in which this fabric of lives illustrates the complexity of navigating life itself. Dance, as an Art, has the capacity to transcend words, and when distilled into a singular performance it is a tapestry of tapestries. Choreographers, designers, composers, artists, performers (onstage and off) all bring their own life experience to the moment witnessed.
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| Paul Taylor's "Speaking in Tongues" - screen capture - Great Performances video. |
The longer we live, it is impossible to not face our mortality, and hopefully recognize how our experience is colored by a multitude of other lives. Looking back at my posts in this blog, I have mentioned only a few of the dancers and artists who have been a part of what made me the dancer I was, and the teacher and coach that I am. Mostly I was writing to aknowledge their ongoing influences on me, whether they have died recently or long past.
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| Arturo "Artie" Fernandez |
1991 (clip from "Loose The Thread" with ODC)
Artie (cream suit), Ney Fonseca, Frank Everett, and me.
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| A recent view of Golden Gate Bridge from the Presidio! |
