What movement vocabulary or word vocabulary do these artists create? How does their new vocabulary communicate more than other, traditional forms of language? Does anything here (or any other dance you’ve seen or text you’ve read) inspire you to create a new vocabulary of movement or language?

Some Questions about the Storm (2001)

by Hilda Raz

What's the bird ratio overhead?

Zero: zero. Maybe it's El Niño?

The storm, was it bad?

Here the worst ever. Every tree hurt.

Do you love trees?

Only the gingko, the fir, the birch.

Yours? Do you name your trees?

Who owns the trees? Who's talking

You presume a dialogue. Me and You.

Yes. Your fingers tap. I'm listening.

Will you answer? Why mention trees?

When the weather turned rain into ice, the leaves failed.

So what? Every year leaves fail. The cycle. Birth to death.

In the night the sound of cannon, and death everywhere.

What did you see?

Next morning, roots against the glass.

Who's talking now and in familiar language? Get real.

What's real is the broken crown. The trunk shattered.

Was that storm worse than others?

Yes and no. The wind's torque twisted open the tree's tibia.

Fool. You're talking about vegetables. Do you love the patio

   tomato? The Christmas cactus?

Yes. And the magnolia on the roof, the felled crabapple, the topless

   spruce.

The Frog in the Swimming Pool (1994)

by Deborah Greger

A wet green velvet scums the swimming pool, 

furring the cracks. The deep end swims

in a hatful of rain, not enough to float

the bedspring barge, the tug of shopping cart.

Green-wet himself, the bullfrog holds his court,

sounding the summons to a life so low

he’s yet to lure a mate. Under the lip

of concrete slab he reigns, a rumble of rock, 

a flickering of sticky tongue that’s licked

at any morsel winging into view.

How would he love her? Let me count the waves* 

that scrape the underside of night and then

let go, the depth of love unplumbed, the breadth,

the height of the pool all he needs to know. 

How do I love him? Let me add the weight

of one hush to another, the mockingbird 

at midnight echoing itself, not him,

one silence torn in two, sewn shut again.

Down to his level in time wings everything. 

He calls the night down on his unlovely head,

on the slimy skin that breathes the slimy air—

the skin that’s shed and still he is the same, 

the first voice in the world, the last each night. 

His call has failed to fill the empty house

across the street, the vacant swing that sways 

halfheartedly, the slide slid into rust,

the old griefs waiting burial by the new.

* Lines 11-14 allude to the Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) sonnet that begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

Dance of the Elements (2002)

by Jody Sperling

Wade in the Water (1960)

by Alvin Ailey