Scared, intimidated, insecure, just plain lost and confused... I experimented all of these things at some point today. It never got to crisis point. They were almost always subtle, a steady current running below my skin underneath all the possibilities that the day brought forward. We had an improvisation marathon. On the street, right in the middle of a very transited area. Our stage: a wooden panel over foam planks. It was in Santurce, an area in the capital of Puerto Rico so evidently urban one almost chokes on speed, fumes and cement. The passing cars, the roaring motorbikes, the children coming back from school. And the junkies, of course. This is metropolitan Puerto Rico after all.
And so we moved. One by one. With some reservation at first. There’s something unnerving about starting to dance and move in a space that seems so strongly demarcated as an anything-but-dancing space. Stray dogs, passing bikes, flying pigeons, circling cop cars... They were all there. And so where we. And we moved.
Exited, hyper, rushed, strong, concentrated, creative, alert... At some point today, I experimented all of these things. To improvise in such a scenario requires such tricky balance, between listening to yourself and listening to others. And this “others” includes things, specially things. The beep.beep.beep of the closing gate to a nearby public housing complex. The experimental music coming from the organic food Coop right in front. The unnerving BAM! of New Year’s Eve explosives making a premature dramatic entrance. I found myself constantly struggling with the possibility of disorientation.
Where was I again? Oh, it doesn’t matter, that car horn goes perfectly with this movement and that movement brings me to this other one and on and on. Or quite the opposite: I could be so immersed in movement, in the hand that circles over the wooden panel that serves as mobile stage, in the sensual experience of dancing, of touching wood, feeling air, and breathing rhythm that for a moment there I would forget that I was on a street. And suddenly, a passing car would shook me, as if 20 other cars hadn’t passed along that same road in the past 5 minutes.
Improvisation/Experience partners: Noemí Segarra, Gandul Torres, Karen Langevin, Marili Pizarro, and most importantly, the city, its people and things.
