“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is a success.” ~Henry Ford
When audience members come to see an Urbanity production, dancing is not the only art form they experience. For “Between the Lines,” our fantastic fall revue, Urbanity collaborated with with one videographer, two set designers, two journalists, one lighting designer, one mask-maker, and two fashion designers to enhance the audience’s experience.
“Between the Lines” was Urbanity’s first show which incorporated journalism into its performance. In the “Time Vacuum” room, which explored human perceptions of time, dancers portraying grandmas wore costumes printed excerpts from memoirs recorded by journalists JD Ho and Kristen Rucki. Including these memoirs on the leotards added a completely new dimension to the dancers’ characters. The memoirs were printed onto the leotards by company member and visual artist Kristina Wright.
“Even a few words can convey how someone speaks, and having text on the costumes will combine body with voice in a way that simply reading the words, or even hearing them, can’t do,” commented Ho prior to the performances.
Check out one of the memoirs we used in the performance below!
The Machine
I was born in this house, and I was raised here. I know everybody. I see them come and go. They call me the Mayor. The Mayor of Medford. I’m 91 years old! My sister lives upstairs. She’s one hundred and two! You can hear her — she’s the loud one.
Do you see this machine? It measures my blood pressure and my heart rate. It keeps a record! And whenever there’s something strange, it tells the hospital, and then the nurses, they come to the house. I have to take twenty pills a day, big ones. The machine tells me what pills to take, and when to take them. Can you imagine that? It speaks English and Spanish. It has a battery in case the power goes out, like during that hurricane.
I’ve got lymphoma. They can’t operate because I’m too old! I had a triple bypass, too. And I had hernia surgery — I used to work in the shipyards. Now I go to chemo. It makes me tired. I get tired just talking. I get tired of being in the house, too. I go a little crazy. And these humid days are hard. It’s hard to breathe. And it makes my arthritis act up.
In the old days, when you were sick, the doctor used to come with his black bag. He came to the house! It didn’t matter if it was raining, snowing. He came. Middle of the night! He came. When I was a kid, I was sick with I don’t know what. Fever. My bedroom was here on the first floor — it’s still my bedroom. Same room! It was cold. My ma piled blankets on me. I felt like a loaf of bread, she had me all wrapped up. The blankets were heavy, and I couldn’t move. Just my head. I could move my head. I could look out the window, and it was snowing. It was snowing hard, big flakes of snow that hit the window — thwap! thwap! It was night-time, and I was alone in the room. I remember that. The things you remember.
And then the doctor came. He had a stethoscope, and he listened to my heart. He took my temperature. He called me ‘young man’. He went out in the hall to talk to my ma. I thought I was going to die! I thought the snow was angels from heaven.
But in the morning, I woke up, and the sun was shining. This machine, it’s got a good battery. It keeps on ticking. People come and go. It keeps on ticking.
~written by JD Ho
Posted on December 9, 2011
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