Deborah Hay on "Beauty"

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder and, back in 2002, Deborah Hay's eyes beheld beauty in a large doodle that has been given a kind of blueprint status and immortality through the solo dance it has inspired. Last evening, Hay gave a "Lecture on the Performance of Beauty," presented by Danspace Project at the Great Hall of Cooper Union where, we were reminded, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama once addressed eager listeners.

Hay told us that Beauty, the solo, began life as O Beautiful--a gentle political hint at the song that many people believe should have been our national anthem (instead of the one we have, with its strident war imagery). Hay's outright political overtones swiftly ended right there since, she admitted, she's uncomfortable with the topic, thinking that she's not informed or articulate enough to give adequate voice to her anger. Instead, she's political because she dances.

Dance is my form of political activism. 

It is not what or why I dance. 

It is that I dance.

Hay ran simultaneous videos of two performances of the solo--the left one, which she does not care for, whimsically-costumed and self-conscious; the right one, stark naked, unguarded, meditative and sacred in feeling. As we watched, she continued to talk, now and again alluding to the fundamental question she posed to her body, and drew a more complex version of her progenitor doodle. I'd recently read Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's memoir of her recovery from stroke--My Stroke of Insight--in which she fondly describes her left and right brains as distinctly separate personalities that, once again, work in beautiful, creative collaboration. Seeing the earlier (left) and later (right) version of Hay's Beauty, I felt I was gaining similar insight into radically divergent aspects of this artist.

So, What if...?

What if every cell in my body has the potential 

to perceive beauty and surrender beauty 

simultaneously 

each and every moment?

That was Hay's generative question and one that could underly everything that we do at every moment, could it not?

The question is in the body of the dancer.

You attend to your navigation 

by keeping the question current.

The question is in the body of each one of us. And isn't the question in the body of not only those who dance but those who look at dance? And, in both cases, answers surely come from the body--as Hay has shared with us in her book, My Body, The Buddhist, and reminded a young man who dared to ask her to explain why dance is important:

Everything I have learned about life 

I have learned from my body while dancing.

She rocked that three times and made it one of the most forceful things she said all evening.

And what if? And what if? And what if?

I'm just devoted to noticing.

Again--a thought for those who dance and for those who encounter dance.

"The ephemerality of dance is the most exciting, thrilling thing about dance as an artform," she says. 

"It is liberating! I chop up that time any way I want."

She slices the air with a cleaver-like right hand. 

"I chop it the way I want," she says with relish, an invitation to celebrate.

***

Danspace Project presents the premiere of Deborah Hay's new solo, No Time to Fly, tonight through Saturday at 8pm, with lighting by master designer Jennifer Tipton. No Time to Fly is part of Danspace Project's PLATFORM 2010: Back to New York City, curated by Juliette Mapp.

Information and ticketing at Danspace Project or 866-811-4111

Danspace Project

St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Manhattan