ALEXANDRA HARRISON

I came here to dance I came here to dance I came here to dance I came here to dance.


Next to me is a friend who is more than 70, swimming in the freezing water,
and I am running around the perimeter of water that holds her.
I am a cartographer, a ship ballast, one large muscle in my own sack of human flesh:
running leaping laughing absorbing.
Gnashing little devil upping and downing the parapets, the hills, the dirt,
to nowhere in particular:
A scurried mission.



I throw myself in:
Behind me a t-shirt with felted letters heralding commitment:
The purpose, the madness!
Tell me map maker, what shall we do?



A drumming drum roll that will not end -
Wilful.
Just a suggestion of momentum
Force, edge, sluice, gnash:
The ‘she’ runs the lake, takes the mountain,
Flies the crag, diving into underbrush,
A thrush with her own song cycle.
Relentless.



The focus, the down throw throwing down running-ness of bone:
Pounding.
The breath and heart needed
For the enterprise.
Such surge to bring to place!
She can be nothing but a poem.



Through winds, terse weather of the world
Through maths problem and handstand
Underneath the under-hum of the world.
She stands on a dead log at the top of a windy hill
And does a good long dog-whale holler.


Expanding the field
Prising open the space,
Fingers bent at the last joint space
A few centimetres, pushed to the in:
75,00 feet of world below.
She peers to the hot centre.
Wilfully.



She leaps.
Across dry river bed,
Across fields of red-breasted robins.
Tiny chortles.
We have lost her to the wind!
But no mind!



She be dancing in the expanded field. 




There was a jade valley:
A Willammee Mooring map search that led to Antarctica.
Running, pacing,
Lashes of latitudes and longitudes
In a scramble of line and
Discord
Naming the inconsequence
of
distance.



When you get going it’s like this: Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight, 32, 36, 40.
44, 48, 52, 60!
A planet in a pattern,
Ah – shoosh – I am free to dream of Antarctica.
I accept, naturally.



Wind in the armpits
Feet akimbo on earth lines,
Are limbs a problem?
Without them perhaps we would be pulled less!
There would be nowhere to go
Ah ha - ha ha.


I knew, I did not know – the words are wonders, the numbers – oh!
They have equal opportunity
And carriage.
Sleep well one might
Comforted by
striates of pluses and minuses and the patterns,
Sleep invokers: tiny latitudes to everywhere.



Pa tum pa tum pa tum
Dog is breathing
There is only one kind
Oh, there is only one kind!!!!



We are flailing arms around like it means something,
and maybe it does.
Delight and brush turkeys,
And a bush map pushing in at the edges of our laughing.
Chuckle chortle guffaw
The madness,
Chekhov’s characters dance endless dances of death and delight
While she does things out in the bush
And the drum rolls.


Things are excited – medicine is excited and having a big voice!
The outside voice is being used inside!
Meanwhile, I am laughing behind my mask
While the world is being all vocal and drum beating
The final frontier is my own breath
GOD!
The ultimate question – can you be with your own body?!



The truth is, our own air is done
That might be the problem, too much human air!
The chuffs have not noticed, the grey strikes are quite self-contained
There are these giant fields, the clouds are rolling by,
the hound has seen the cows:
This could change the speed of things!



This is when arms are problematic – they might leave me.
Up hill and down and leap into the inlet.
Beyond.


*Continued to completion in full text link (look right)

24 July 2020

She: Goldie, country Victoria
I: Spare room, house,
Melbourne

Excerpt:
'Drum roll to everywhere:
a poem with 29 movements and 3 statements'

by Paea Leach

Bringing the north to the south
I am laying it out in branches
A footprint in the field
Overlooking the dams
I am not in the Antarctic
But the winds are from there
And we are high enough for snow sometimes

I heard about the gorillas in Seattle this evening
In 1979 before moving them from concrete cages
Into one of the first enclosures
Replicating a natural habitat
There was great fear that the gorillas
Would get sick because the new environment
Was outdoors and couldn’t be properly disinfected
And they were afraid that the gorillas would
Hurt themselves climbing the trees
They didn’t

I think about vitality
And the cost of safety
And the hazards of protection
And what animals need
Rolling hugs and proximity
And the open field of animal contact
And to breathe

The sniffing and hanging tongue
Of close greeting and holding hands
I think of being-in-Europe (so far away now)
I think of sauna
The intimate space
Warmth, porous bodies, inhaling wood
Cedar cedar cedar
OH CANADA
Sasamat and Mayne Island
In the fire glow

I think this is what the winter song will be
A sauna song of sweat and chill
And fearless me next to fearless you
In animal relationship

And maybe a couple of signs
All welcome and
Clothes are ridiculous


IDI IDI IDI – the violin score for dancers

Idi idi idi idi idi idi idi idi
Long bow violin
Chit chit chit chit chit chit
Collection of certain shapes
Something swells
Wave is w
Mountain is m
Jagga jagga jagga jagga
Run remotely
If you see a hill, climate

You are the silent teacher (he says)
You cultivate boring nothing
And your special knack
For bringing things alive by seeing them
Is lying asleep

You breathe in
You breathe out
An embarrassment of emptiness
A foolishness of filling
Begging for a friendly architect
Your value is on the decline
You are lucky to find a pole
Even if it is a tree
You carry it
Hero

Imagine the flag
And a room
Of benches and bodies
A winter garden of smooth cedar
And hot rocks
A northern hemisphere viral inferno
Build it and the Germans will come

Build anything
A small tower of grains
A sandwich tent
You who produce nothing
But endless meals
Eclipsed by full scale shut down
And you are shouting now
That you are not shut down
You are an expanding enterprise

There are more mutterings
And none of them are very coherent


Vibrant Matter – more about the whale or it’s nice to be in water now

But more the whale about
Whale more 
Said idea of a dear friend
Dear friend mine wasn’t it 
Sense complete recognition leapt 
And I with it
Closing just now not necessary eyes
Thinking I grow heavy and slow
Loud body and buoyant breath
And in it my new mass
Massive
Turning slowly head
Different totally to kelp
Also am I kelp because think of I it
For my kelp being is excellent muscle stomach
Strong swaying centre
Around it
Everything waving
 

RESPONSE:
'SAUNA-ING: an effort towards gentle thawing and deep warming'
(in 100 lines and 4 trills)

by Alexandra Harrison

IMAGE:
Moving through #4
(bush camera)

IMAGE:
'the difficult comedown'
(Alex carries the moon)
created & performed by Leach and Harrison,
DANCE MASSIVE 2019.
Photographer: Heidrun Löhr

ALEX is a trained anthropologist who has never practiced. She is an untrained dancer who has practiced for 20 years. She is also a mother - definitely untrained. She used to listen to her feet when she danced and probably still does. This has its limits as well as advantages. She has made visible lots of strange and special treasures, which disappears into a past she can only glimpse. Today, she is interested in vitality, being the whale and doing charcoal and movement workshops with lawyers. She knows there is no line really and yet she is following something. Yesterday she learned to use a ride-on mower on her farm in regional Victoria. She would like to thank both Gertrude and Alice.