We’ve had quite a ride with the ups and downs of our residency this past week. I feel thoroughly challenged and tested by the weather, broken air-conditioning, the difficulty of navigating and guiding a group through emotionally-charged material and trying to acknowledge and integrate all the feelings and images and memories that have been trickling up from my subconscious as we probe into competition dynamics.

We have one more day of rehearsal, and then we’re at performance day. I think it’s all gonna accelerate really quickly now towards our sharing with the public–and our culminating competitions.

The few days before performance are almost always exhilarating and terrifying for me. There’s this palpable sense of hurling towards an explosive end.

I question at this point why I ever thought art-making was a good idea, and especially what I was smoking when I decided to plan this particular performance. Everything comes into doubt, nothing seems ready, and there’s never enough time to prepare. We’re at the top of a roller coaster summit about to plunge into rickety depths that are hidden in darkness, and there’s no way to stop it.

We did a very rough run of all our material yesterday, and as always, I’m completely surprised that it seems to flow and actually be the sketch of a complete piece. But of course, there’s a ton of work still to be done.

Now is the time for me to call upon great courage. And great courage can only manifest when there is great fear. Performance seems to be courage cultivation practice for me–and the fear never seems to go away. There’s always so much at stake in performance, and I think that is a key factor in my love for this path. It wakes me up and stops me in my tracks, over and over and over.

Here’s our ensemble at work. This is Mickey helping our guest choreographers Mischa and Cleveland Plonsey with their ideas for a piece they co-created with us:

And then here’s the report from our four judges for Day 12: