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Festival Sens Dessus Dessous,

Con il Festival Sens Dessus Dessous, la Maison de la danse di Lione propone creazioni, lavori interdisciplinari e work in progress che difficilmente troverebbero una collocazione nelle programmazioni classiche. Dal 5 al 18 marzo la città transalpina sarà messa “sottosopra” da sette produzioni che si annunciano altamente affascinanti e drammaticamente impegnate

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#Arkadi Zaides #Ashley Chen #Dorothée Munyaneza #Heddy Maalem #Patricia Apergi #Philip Connaughton #Serge Aimé Coulibaly #Yoann Bourgeois

"Wonder" By Ashley Chen

I guess there were always three people in our relationship, you, me, and the aching wildness of wanderlust. She has always poured her elixir into my ear, inciting feverish dreams, my small cavity of a body filled with the vastness, the untamed beauty of indomitable mountains, the openness, the unbridled joy of speeding down an empty highway—80! 90! 100!—miles an hour. She wails her longing into my ear, gasping and thirsting for the ecstatic freedom that few men achieve, caved in by their own fear and insecurity when they reach the base of the towering mountain, egos never stretching high enough to cover a hundredth of the mountain’s height, and they realize what had looked small enough to fit in the palm of their hand three hundred miles away is large enough to hold them in the palm of its craggy, unexpected hands. Wanderlust always whispered to you about places with music and dancing, the exotic tongues pouring in your ears, the elusive dream of it tormenting you like the withdrawal of a drug, slamming the doors in your face, never once allowing you to catch a fleeting glimpse of it—

Now that you are gone, it is again the lonely couple—a man and his own dreams, slowly crumbling with the burden of age, the nine to five routine, the stucco walls of my apartment more real than the mountains that I always chased, the last ray of a golden, delicious sunshine sliding into sunset—I just want to lasso it, hold it to my breast, bask in its glorious warmth, savor the magic it ignites in me—so quickly it slips through the fingers, through the soul, through the mind, to join my dying memories in the taunting game of hide-and-seek. Mortality raises its gleaming knife above the thinning hair of my head, delicately etching thin lines into my face, as it admires my bravery but always knowing that it will be the victor at the end of the battle—a gallant David against a kind, wise, but ruthless Goliath, except that David’s stone never scratched the giant, never hurt him in the least bit. “Come,” it says, with a kindly pat on the head, heavy with the wisdom that it imparts grief everywhere it treads, but understanding of the fear of the unknown that people are all so afflicted with. My lips trembling, my hands shaking, I reach out with the utmost innocent fear to grasp the hand of something much older, much more powerful, much wiser than I could ever be. And I get up, leaving behind a shell that at once gave me so much heady exuberance but also became a shackle, letting all my cruel dreams melt dejectedly into the shell, shock on their faces as I walk away and smile.

#prose #Ashley Chen