the danceplay:
and the empty space of his shadow

Inspirations

4. Click on the image to see a larger view. What we are looking for is the panel in the bottom right corner.

...a story

Every year, David Kemmeries gave his lover Jac Wall a portrait for Valentine's Day and his birthday. When Jac was very ill, he propped himself up against a wall so that David could trace his silhouette for one final portrait. "He had a hard time standing," remembers 27-year-old David... (from picture book published by NAMES Project)

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...the Aids Memorial Quilt

The Aids Memorial Quilt is a powerful work of art and post-modern performance. It is a public display of personal affections. It is a political demonstration of voices from the fringes of society.

Sounds heavy. But these seem to fade away when you see this particular quilt panel.

Very simply, the quilt panel shows a white silhouette of a standing man, outlined in black, against a blue background. While the Aids Quilt's point is to memorialise people by their names, this seems to show an unwillingness to be remembered.

Look closer and you discover that the black outline is actually a string of embroidered words, naming the deceased and his attributes.

Jac Wall is my lover. Jac Wall had Aids. Jac Wall died. I love Jac Wall. Jac Wall is a good guy. Jac Wall made me a better person. Jac Wall could beat me in wrestling...

An invocation of Jac around his absent body. The quilt is striking, and perspective-changing, in its combined subversion and over-submission to the idea of evoking the presence of the absent one.

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I don't need words of comfort,
solutions,
Just
your warm body mass
Like when I wake up next to you.

...a gift for a lover

I tend to make intensely personal dance. In October 1999 I was making a solo, and from the same creative source came the poem, The warmth I feel. The movement and text naturally suited one another.

In a private showing, I presented the dance as a gift to my lover. And again I presented it in April 2000, this time in a public dance platform. Both times the response I received were somewhat stunned silence, or vulnerability expressed in subdued voices. One person said it was "brave, very cruel, you were brave."

The dance was about a lover who was both there and not there. When I danced it, there was a phantom, a presence on stage, on the outer edges of my consciousness, so that I was not immediately conscious of it.

It is through the lens of this dance that I experience and interpret the story of Jac and David.

the danceplay
the danceplay: content