Hello!

I hope everyone is enjoying the switch into fall. I got excited this week because I got to dig out a sweater and go for a walk in what was definitely an autumn afternoon, complete with cold breeze and bright gold sunlight. Lovely lovely.

Lately, I’ve been working with Alex Ketley on an interesting project which is being performed in November. It’s called ICARUS/RISE and is part of the Iranian Literary Arts Festival. The piece is a collaborative project that combines dance, video, original music, and contemporary Iranian poetry. The Icarus myth is sort of an underpinning that connects the different sections; the director of the project told us that she wants it to serve as a metaphor for both an immigrant’s experience of a new life and an artist’s work for expression. Only without the falling out of the sky and plunging to death ending.

Here’s a photographer capturing an image of the rare Alex Ketley in his natural habitat:

When Alex first told me about the project, I thought: well, that’s a bit weird and I’m not sure how it’s all going to come together. After working on it for a few weeks, I’m still not quite certain how everything is going to connect, but I think something very nice might come out of it. The music is fantastic and Alex says that the musicians are amazing. The dancers are all friends who I love working with, and it’s interesting to hear poetry in a language that’s completely unfamiliar.

My favourite thing about the project so far though is that we get to work out in the Marin Headlands. The Headlands are just across the Golden Gate. There are hills and little mountains and beaches and the area was used for military installations until 1972 (I looked that up on the website where I also learned that the buildings are from 1907). Alex has a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, so we get to work in this old building that used to be a gym/recreation area. The main floor where we work has the remnants of a basketball court and downstairs are a couple of fantastically unkempt bowling lanes. When it starts to get dark, the whole place looks like the perfect setting for one of those horror movies where a group of likeable people take shelter from a storm in a ramshackle building only to find themselves vanishing one by one to ominous music… In the daylight however, the place is lovely and we see deer and birds and hikers and even one coyote.

Dancing on picnic tables… I’m the one who looks like a troll shriveling up in the sunlight:

If anyone is in the SF area next weekend and wants to spend some time in the outdoors and see some art at the same time, the Headlands Center is having an open house on Sunday the 14th. People are invited to wander around and peek into different studios to see what the artists are up to. There’s a “Mess Hall” for lunch, or you could bring a picnic and eat overlooking the Golden Gate. We’re going to be rehearsing and improvising for an hour or so at 4 pm.