I DON'T KNOW AND NEVER WILL
Premiere: March 2018
ODC Theater, San Francisco
I Don’t Know and Never Will grew out of reading old letters and re-experiencing the deeply personal contact that my friends and I created and responded to through our letters. The stories we told in our own handwriting, when we spent time thinking and writing, were the seed for this piece about connection, solitude, thoughtfulness, and language. I feel I’ve lost the visceral connection to words that comes from writing by hand on paper. So I’ve begun again to write by hand to friends.
I’ve asked people from the community to write notes to a prompt and submit them to us, so that voices from today can be incorporated into this piece. You hear different excerpts from some of these notes during each performance. The making of I Don’t Know and Never Will was a collaborative process with the dancers. This is both my story and theirs. Their interpretations—of the movement phrases and directives, the underlying ideas and the text—merged their voices with mine.
The piece— its underpinnings— have created such a strong connection of past to present, re-experiencing parts of my life and bring what is meaningful into life at present. The process has been difficult for me and also wondrous; how we all get from “there” to “here.” It has made me push this train of thought into the future and wonder how different and unimaginable life will be.
VIDEO TRAILER
Choreography: Liss Fain
Music: Jordan Glenn
Music performed by:
Jordan Glenn, Nava Dunkelman, Jacob Felix Heule
Installation and Lighting Design: Matthew Antaky
Costume Design: Mary Domenico
Performers (March 2018):
Sonja Dale, Liss Fain, Megan Kurashige, Shannon Kurashige, Val Sinckler, Sarah Dionne Woods-LaDue
Photos: Stephen Texeira