Submitted by janet on Sun, 09/07/2008 – 6:05pm.

i agree so much – that Mapp’s piece affected us all because we could all relate to it in some way. that it was theater at least as much as it was dance. that empathy and personal associations mingled happily as i watched.

what i find so interesting is that i also agree that it was the quartet with her peers that really did me in. like you, i found myself thinking right then about my place in all of this. but from the other side of the fence. at 23 and still in school, i felt like i could imagine that in my life, that i could almost feel it! but that it was still just out of my reach so far, just on the horizon. i’m still developing those relationships, and my peers and i are still developing our artistic voices. but in that moment, i could envision us, in our mid 30s, having recently taken the dance world by storm. very different from your experience. but also, i think, somehow the same.

and this was one of the few sections that was really just dancing – no prologue or epilogue. just their dancing. so was it the movement that hit us? the performers? their status as “peers”? i guess i think “yes” to all of it. and i think that, at least for me, the entire rest of the piece – the theater that i had already seen – was just setting me up for that dance.