TORT
Here’s a poem I wrote as the program note for my semi-improvised solo dance performance.
I won the Most Promising Male Dancer award for this 10-minute performance at the FNB Vita Dance Indaba festival in Cape Town.
It’s my humble creative offering from my first year at the Cape Town School of Dance in 1997.
I used music from Vena Cava - a 1993 live performance album by Diamanda Galás (Mute Records).
The concept of Tort grew out of my previous 1996 solo, Variations on a Body: Dance Peace.
Tort came about because I didn’t feel at peace as a dancer in my first year of Dance School. I was going through an identity crisis far from the safety and support of my home and my friends in Durban.
I had just completed an intense Drama degree, which culminated in me writing 5 successfully produced plays in the last five months before graduation. I had thrown myself fully into everything Dramatic for three years. I believed I could be anything: an actor, a physical theater performer, a contemporary dancer, a choreographer, a playwright, a director, a stage manager, and even a stage designer. I grabbed every opportunity I could to seize the day and to do it all. I had even been an usher at the on-campus Elizabeth Sneddon Theater.
I successfully auditioned for the Cape Town School of Dance when Cape Town City Ballet performed in Durban. I was able to attend a company class with these professionals.
So in January 1997 I bought a Bazbus ticket and journeyed for three days from Durban to Cape Town. I was a first year student again. This time I was at one of the top professional dance schools in South Africa. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I trusted my intuition and decided to take the most difficult challenge of starting over again.
After a few months of student life I felt I was contorting my drama body and huge ego into the muscular confines of a dance body.
According to the Enclyclopedia Brittanica, tort derives from the Latin tortum, which means “something twisted, wrung, or crooked.”
Tort was my way of expressing that twisted and wrung feeling I had on stage.
Tort
I dance in fits and starts,
convulsing on the stage.
I contort my empty soul
in time, in space.
It makes no difference
as long as I claim indifference.
I bought these pics from the official event photographer, but I can’t find a record of his name. If you are him or know who the photographer is, please contact me so I can credit you properly here. Thanks again for taking such awesome photos during the performance. You’re amazing!
Here are 9 action shots from my solo:
This award-winning solo was the start of my ‘professional’ dance career on stage. I’m still proud of this milestone achievement over 25 years later. I only wish my mom could have been in the audience to see her son dance his heart out while pushing his body beyond any limits he thought he had.
How about you?
What past milestone achievements are you still proud of today?
Have your limits ever been pushed or redefined as you’ve grown into the amazing person you are today?
TORT
Oh wow...now I wish there was a video!!! Such gorgeous shots, and I FEEL that poem. And yes, we do believe that when we're young, before they get their convincing hooks into us, don't we - that we can be all those things? Thankfully I never stopped. I think that's one of my most cherished milestones. It absolutely has stunted my career and my ability to woo algorithms, this refusal to Specialize, but I do not regret it for a second. Do you know about Emilie Wapnick and multipotentialites?
My biggest milestones...hmmm...Valedictorian is an obvious one. Finishing my first novel and being published in an anthology at 17. Successfully replying, "Watch me," to my doctors' prognosis that I'd never be a professional dancer again after being rammed by a drunk driver, and then hammering the point home by hop-skipping onto the international stage instead. Then just grinding notions like that into dust by becoming a blackbelt. That tiny stint of time I was agented and working through a revision for a Big 5 editor (before acquiring brain injury #2 and the year of chronic seizures it gave me). Realizing that the world of traditional publishing and my TBIs are not happy playmates, yet obsessively continuing to regurgitate novel series, even though I have no idea what to do with them. Probably the biggest ones are, after all the injuries, all the abuses experienced by a clueless neurodivergent who had no idea what that is or why she couldn't figure out this Peopleing Thing, and 4 brain traumas, I'm still capable of doing amazing things, and--most importantly--I still haven't lost my sense of wonder.
Oh. And I am capable of belching "Luke, I am your fahhhthah," sometimes even without drinking a Coke. I know. You needed to know that. Off to cook dinner and dance in the kitchen. Then probably in the studio later.
What are you dancing to today? If you use Notes, tag me! (Can we tag each other here?)