limassol CYPRUS 2016

Lia Haraki is a performing and performance artist based in Limassol Cyprus.  She has created 15 works for the stage and alternative spaces in the frame of the creative structure .pelma. Her work has been presented internationally amongst others at the Kalamata International Festival, Julidans Amsterdam, Athens Festival, Royal Festival Hall London, Bozar Belgium. She has been awarded two times the choreography award at the Cyprus dance platform (2003, 2005) and her works were two times short listed by the Aerowaves network (2004, 2009). Her choreographic practices ‘Standup PerformDance’ and ‘IntuNition’ are taught to performance makers in structures like Dance House Tilburg and Impuls Tanz Vienna. She is a lecturer at the Dance Programme of the University of Nicosia. In 2005 she initiated the birth of Dance House Lemesos. This year she was selected to participate at the Venice Biennale Art exhibition with her solo performance ‘Tune In’ which has also been presented in festivals all over Europe.

She is a selected artist for the EU programme ‘Act Your Age’

 

Arianna Marcoulides was born in Limassol in 1982. Contemporary dancer, performer and teacher. Studied at SEAD (Salzburg) from 2001 until 2004. Returned to Cyprus and worked with many of the burgeoning dance companies and choreographers on the island such as Lia Haraki and Alexis Vassiliou.

Between 2007 and 2009 studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (Frankfurt) for an MA in Contemporary Dance Education.

Returning once again to Cyprus choreographed the piece “Fellow People” (2009/ performance) with Katja Mustonen and Patrick Giesberts, “Reform” (2009/ site-specific performance), “About Side Walks” (2010/ dance video) with Eleana Alexandrou and Eva Korae, “Shelf life” (2011/ performance), “Along the Way…Forgotten” (2013/ performance), “Step.4.2” (2014/ performance), “Stomach Rumblings” (2015/ performance). From 2006 to current date- parallel to making my own pieces- I have regularly worked with many distinguished choreographers. I am a DanceWeb scholarship holder (summer 2011). One of the five resident artists of the E-motional Artistic Research Programme (under the guidance of Cosmin Manulescu) from 2012-2013. Movement coordinator and coach for the theatre piece, “Faust” under the direction of Stephanos Droussiotis for the Kipria Festival (2013). Nominated for ‘Best Choreography’ in the THOC Annual Theatre Awards Resident artist at the Old Vinegar House performance space (Limassol/Cyprus) in 2013 and 2014 and at Dance House Lemesos in 2014 and 2015.

 

Not to be able to reach physically an object makes the sense of sight important

You reach it with your eyes

The object becomes your view of it

The object becomes your view of it

A vertical line

A vertical line sitting on the horizon

A vertical horizon

Just like our bodies

who surrender their weight on earth, on the horizon, on the never-ending line

only to find unconditional support always and however forever lasts.

 

I was a cat in need of a stroke.

In need, in desire, in thirst for attention, for love.

For ones’ energy, the power of the human touch.

The wind in this case was the stroke. Thank you wind.

The noise was affecting us

‘ηχορύπανση’ in Greek means noise pollution.

I wanted to protect Lin and Arianna from it.

This man was cutting off trees and cutting off silence,

and cutting off our right to silence.

We surrendered to the noise and I also covered Lin’s ears.

The human touch again.

The need of the vertical to become horizontal

To mate

To create

To give birth

To go through pain

In order to regain purring

peace,

the vertical once more.

And there was also something about the space in between, the off balance which is a space of instability, risk and mystery which keeps us in action

and when we do finally fall or stand ,

we better rest,

because suspension is exciting but tiring,

tiring enough…. in order to transform us

 

Andrew and Jenny in the middle of the sea –Androgyny

says Arianna

What a wonderful song!

and also ‘EDO LEMESOS’ which is the Limassol carnival song I had sang.

It is like the Limassol anthem or the Limassol marathon!

Who would you run for Lin?

For my father, my mother, for you and you, for me, for the people that drown, for the refugees.

We came from Lebanon and Lin from Denmark and Arianna is Limassolian.

Roots !

Arianna wishes she could have met her ancestors. That would have been so cool. The closest thing to that would be to get to know one’s self, since they all live in there.

And the word Limassol is Greek is LEMESOS that contains the word SOS inside it, so it’s an alarm

It’s like saying mayday or rescue me please, rescues me!

Rescue me from my roots, from my ancestor’s sins, from my past and future, from that which I cannot escape, from my destiny…..

Telepathy feels like home. It’s where all the dimensions become one and in that state you can meet whoever has run for you all your life….

…and many have run for you and for every one of us!

They have run, as the president runs for his election,

But wouldn’t it be more appropriate if he walked his election?

To walk in honour of his beliefs and even better: to walk backwards,

Proudly!

So he can allow people to see his vision which is revealed on the forefront, as he gradually opens up the space for it.

In the middle of the earth there is the Mediterranean (mid-terra)

But thank God the earth is round so every single place is a Mediterranean!

Or at least could be….

Brackets

What’s in a bracket?

Something perhaps that’s considered more important than the bracket itself

Brackets though are the ones that have run for you supported you

And you are the cause

Just there in between the runners

Vulnerable and strong

A pampered queen of a marathon others run on your behalf

Anyway the play was in 4 acts and had an English accent.

The object of a pen became the tool for what I labelled

‘Practical Art’

So of course it wrote a poem

‘Form, which reforms

That which informs and then deforms’

Arianna became a bird and Lin was much occupied with being careful and her careful solo

became a crow, crawling to be heard on 4 legs that led the piece to part 4.

A useless art pile which was artistic enough as theory could make it

A total failure!

GSO Stadium

Rewriting Limassol

(Blue Graffiti sprayed on a step: >BART<)

BART has an arrow to his right and to his left both pointing inwards.

Towards him.

Pointing him out.

Bracketed.

Enclosed.

I don’t know how long >BART< has been here or will be here. It feels like a long time. His blue paint seems a little faded and scraped away.

Does he get bored?

Does he count the lamp posts in the stadium?

He looks out from the concrete and sees the tips of the trees and the sun lighting up the broken coloured glass as though they have turned to liquid.

Lia dancing with the paper in the wind.

Lin not liking the sound of the hedge cutter and saying it and showing it and singing it.

At times accepting this invasive sound at other getting annoyed with it. Allowing annoyance to bring about a whole new set of creativity.

Net shadowing on the paper. Lines. Drawing and shadow living together on paper. The one permanent the other ephemeral and ever changing.

Sun creates light and dark. Creates the spaces in between. The negative spaces.

Leaning, “Being off balance is the way to be” says Lia. I hold her arm and help her be off balance until finally she gives way to horizontality and releases to the ground. My body molds over hers.

Lin and Lia leaning on the rail.

Sun hot against my skin making my black hat heat up. Lia squinting, Lin’s eye glasses turning into purple green mirrors where once they were clear.

GSO

Rewriting Limassol

Running. Walking. Memories. Being. Faking. Believing.

A turtle was the inspiration behind my running – LIE.

Guy grew up with a turtle which would bury itself in the ground every winter and resurface every summer until one summer it did not reappear – TRUE.

Walking a presidential campaign.

Androgyny is beautiful and attractive.

Andrew and Jenny in the middle of the sea.

The Mediterranean Sea is the sea in the middle of the earth.

Limassol is a woman, dark hair, big eyebrows. Mediterranean.

Lin’s new shoes take her running around the stadium.

Lia had already run around it before her.

I had to do it too.

Embarrassing words: butt cheek, spotty ass.

Hi!

Lia and Lin on the opposite sides of the shadow rail track saying, Hi!

GO LIA GO! YOU CAN DO IT!

For Lia, for my family, for my mother, for you, I run for you, for the sea.

GSO Stadium

Rewriting Limassol

Birds.

Bird sounds.

Cawing, cooing, trilling.

Lia is a bird and uses the paper to give herself a beak, a tail and wings.

Lin makes sounds of a bird from under the cover of soft crumpled paper.

I imitate a group of crows that own the stadium.

A murder of crows. That’s what a collective of crows is called. I’m not so sure of how murderous these crows are though. They look more like a mischievous street gang from the musical West Side Story.

Art, conceptual art.

Bracketed.

Highlighted.

Lia writing her poem: Form, reform, inform, deform.

Collecting all of our pens and pencils.

Repairing the broken pencil with masking tape.

Writing a sound score for Lin to sing the songs of the birds.

Rewriting Limassol

July 2016

Limassol – Vienna

 

sunday, july 17^th 2016

First Letter

 

Dearest Lia,

Dearest Lin,

Dearest Arianna

I decided I will write you each day a letter – from tomorrow on, at the same time that you will be practicing. The distance of Rewriting Distance is now a concrete one between Limassol and Vienna but hopefully, this writing – this ‘correspondence’ as Ingold would call it, will weave some sentient lines between the four of us, which eventually might also include the audience on Friday and Saturday.

I will start today with my memories of previous visits to Limassol, but later on in the week, the writing will hopefully also get more actualized by your everyday practice.

Walking is so much a part of the Rewriting Distance practice. It was and is its original score, the point of departure of Lin and I coming together, repeating the distance between Antwerp and Montreal.

Also in Limassol, my strongest memories are walks along the seaside, which I would share with a lot of locals. Whenever I would return to Limassol, I would repeat the same walking routine. In the mornings, often very early, I would walk from Annie’s apartment, down the street to the sea and at the Catholic Church I would turn left and walk along the seaside towards the tourist area. I remember the terrace where you will perform on, as somehow marking the halfway point of my morning walks; a border between the reality of the town and the illusions of the tourist district.

In the late afternoon or evening, I would repeat the walk but now I would turn right at the church and join a legion of citizens promenading between the sea and the park, where street cats and children would play or hide for shadow between the toys and the sculptures.

There is something very powerful, walking the edge of land and water, especially on an island – but even in my hometown Antwerp, I would experience this, when I went on my Sunday walks along the river, the Schelde. Being grounded in the fluidity of waves and tides.

It feels symbolic that it is my foot being infected that prevents me of joining you, keeping me home, at a distance. It is my right foot, of my shorter leg, which would float in the air until I started wearing shoe elevations. The foot that until now got less injured than the right one, who was always more grounded but also more at risk. The infection happened between the fire toe and the air toe (I hope Lin will still be able to guide you through my yoganidra of the elements) and although like any injury when it happens, it is disturbing in the moment, I do feel that it is part of larger cycle of healing, through ‘controlled poisoning’. I intend to do some reading on the ‘feet’ in order to deepen my understanding this week and if I discover anything, I will share it with you.

So my proposal to you is to read my daily letters before you start the practice as a way of me being present at a distance. And if it is not too much work, maybe you can type out the writing you do after the practice and send it to me on a daily basis as well, so that we all stay connected through our lines of correspondence.

I reread this morning The Author in Truth in which Helen Cixous discusses the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. I like to quote the last lines of that essay as a way to conclude this first letter:

 

Sometimes one has to go very far.

Sometimes the right distance is extreme remoteness.

Sometimes it is in extreme proximity that she breathes.

 

Have a great start of the practice tomorrow. I wish I was there but then I am there. And greet the sea from me.

Warm embraces,

Guyx

 

monday, july 18^th 2016

Rewriting Limassol

Second Letter

 

Dear all,

It feels you have found the right place: a terrace between land and sea; another horizon-tal line to be inhabited and moved by the ‘vertical horizons’ of your bodies. And the right time: it must be wonderful to go there as early as 5am, in the morning. Has the sun already risen? Or are you watching that as well?

My foot is healing well, everyday a bit less swollen. It only feels the antibiotics they gave me are very strong and are interfering with my digestion, so I have to be careful with what I eat and drink a lot of water.

Before I received Lin’s writing after the first practice, I was staying with my own physical sensations and thoughts. I was rereading a chapter on the symbolism of the human body in the Jewish-Christian traditions: how the injury of the foot from Oedipus, Achilles over Jacob to Marie Magdalena is the image of the transformation from ‘red man’ to ‘green man’, incorporating the feminine into the male. This is where I am still today on my journey; in-between red and green; while the three of you are exploring blue ‘the balance of betweening’.

Because of that blue, I am reminded of a book which Lin recommended to me many years ago: The Anthropology of Turquoise – Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone and Sky by Ellen Meloy. I pick it up from my library and reread the passages that I marked when I first read it:

“The Icelandic word for blue and black is the same, one word that fits sea, lava and raven.” (p. 12)

and

“It seems as if the right words can come only out of the perfect space of a place you love.” (p. 15)

and

“For me the bond between self and place is not conscious – no truth will arrive that way – but entirely sensory.” (p. 216)

and

“A labyrinth has rhythmic paths to its centre.” (p. 90)

‘A stain in the concrete that looks like a labyrinth.’ I feel that in my labyrinth, I had to stay home this week – browsing my library intuitively in response to your physical explorations of ‘vertical horizons’, while continuing to listen to the sensations of my own body.

I pick up another book which I bought second hand and haven’t read yet: Exploring the labyrinth. A guide for healing and spiritual growth by Melissa Gay West. On the cover is a woman walking the ‘rhythmic path’ of a labyrinth drawn in the sand of a beach, close to its shore line. A previous reader made only one comment in the margins of the book: “Labyrinth is a heart thing – Maze is a head thing.”

Before dialoguing with Lin’s writing, I was also revisiting some writing about walking, amongst others the chapter on ‘walking’ in Histoires des Gestes: how ‘walking is a perceptive dialogue with the ground’; ‘how it is at the same time an act of elevating and of grounding oneself’; ‘how it both leaves a trace and is the act of departing’.

Maybe as a preparation you should once walk the different horizontal lines: the water; the shoreline; the sand; the concrete; the paper;…. and practice both ‘leaving’ and ‘leaving traces’ – foot-prints of ‘writing as the shadows we cast’.

From here to there, where you are, my skin senses textures you explore from my tinseling toes, creeping up my ankles along my body to my wrist and my fingertips, which are guiding this pen over the paper – ‘the water surface’, the fluidity, which connects us all.

 

When I was a teenager and aspired to be a poet, I was very much inspired by a Dutch poet Hendrik Marsman, in particular by the following lines, which literally translated would read:

“He who wants to write

Shall write in the spirit of this Sea

Or won’t write at all.”

He was referring to the Mediterranean and I kept these lines for years as a motto of my own writing. They also urged me to move South as often as I could. First Italy, then Spain and later Greece and Cyprus, which is at ‘the heart of this Sea’ and which I will revisit soon enough, in early autumn.

I wish you a great second day and practice. And if the shadow of the blue chair colors in-between, it is me!

Warm embraces,

Guyx

 

tuesday, july 19^th 2016

Rewriting Limassol

Third letter

 

Dear all,

I very much enjoy corresponding with you from a distance and reading your writing. In order to reach something at a distance, you can sometimes bring it closer or touch it with your sight as Lia states but if the distance is even further, words and writings can have the same effect. Your writing makes me present. It stirs my imagination and it recreates for me clear images and sensations: of Lia balancing on the railing or covering Lin’s ears after both of you sang a song to silence the noise of the hedge cutters; of Arianne creating a web, a mezz work of lines with paper and shadows; of the graffiti and the stains on the concrete of the terrace; of the three of you exchanging memories of loved ones or your present desires; of the blue fireflies of sneakers; of the sea and the sun rising;…

What a great way to start the practice in the sea, being cradled by waves, while the sun comes up.

The water – the fluidity

The earth – being grounded

The sun – heath and fire

The wind – stroking and touching our skin whenever we need it.

 

Reading Arianne’s and Lia’s writing after the first practice yesterday, I am reminded of how much I love balancing acts. Usually I am the one who would be balancing on the railing, but now Lia has taken up that role, to activate ‘the space of instability, risk and mystery’; the suspension in-between vertical and horizontal.

I am glad Jerome joined you today. The turtle is one of these animals that connect earth and sea. In the map of Venice you can recognize the head of a turtle meeting a dolphin. I remember how Jerome was very present when we practiced with Lia and Mala here in Vienna. How the tissue of the witness chair peeled off on Lia to become her turtle shield and how Lia’s drawing of the calligraphy on a turtle’s shield became the ideal cover and conclusion of my PhD. In a lot of cultures turtles are part of the myths of genesis, re-birth. And as we discovered many times, for the latter you have to let go and shed your old skin. I wish us all a lot of ‘shedding’ this week.

It is true that to be Limassol is to be ‘outside’. I do have strong memories of ending in the fountain in the square in front of the market when we performed Repeating Distance, many years ago: the sea stars and sea horses painted on the blue.

To run! The next chapter in Histoires de Gestes after walking, is about running, ‘half way between walking and jumping’. I translate freely:

‘Running presents two key moments, which decide the flexibility and the power of the action: the beginning and the end of the momentum (in French: élan). In the beginning of the momentum, the foot pushes against the ground and the body tilts forwards: that push, which combines the force of the muscles of thighs and calves permits the acceleration and needs to be accompanied by a forward projection of the runner. At the end of the momentum, the opposite foot re-finds the ground, with a light flexion of the knee to facilitate the landing. Between these two moments the body is, for a brief moment, suspended in the air, as in a jump.’

 

Run! Jump! Be suspended! In-Between! And off balance!

Let the wind touch you! The sun heath you! The waves cradle you! The ground support you!

Play with the kittens! Stroke each other! And purr!

Let Jerome join you in his own slow ancient rhythm, connecting earth and sea!

Be the middle!

And shed!

Lets hold a hurdle race for turtles!

Yours, at a distance,

Guyx

 

wednesday, july 20^th 2016

Rewriting Limassol

Fourth letter

 

Dear all,

As Lin stated in today’s letter, we know from experience that the Wednesday – the third day; the middle day – is always an unexpected break through. We still have to be careful: Mind the gap! But we can also allow ourselves to fail, to walk backwards,… and by doing so discover new ways to rewrite the distances, which turn out to be much shorter than we originally thought they would be.

The healing continues to advance well, with some strange, magic side effects. So I allowed myself to do again my yoganidra practice this morning to have a clearer sense of the energy flows inside my body. I also consulted the I-Ching, which I hadn’t done for a long time – the previous entry in my little I-Ching diary was from July 25^th, 2013, almost exactly three years ago. I use a version of the book, which was given to me by Marie-Josee, an ex-dancer of Cie Marie Chouinard who was my first introduction to Montreal in 1991. I also always use three old Greek, 100 Drachme coins to throw the lines.

Today, I didn’t have a particular question but just wanted to check in with my general state of being and look what I throw:

16. Yih – Enthusiasm – The Earth below and Thunder above.

It is one of the few signs of the 64 that explicitly mentions music and dance!

On the level of Artha – our social, earthly life, the interpretation reads:

‘This is the hexagram of music that moves. This is the music that gathers together and inspires feelings of brotherhood and common cause. (…) It is music that unites those who play it and listen to it, elevating them. If you are a musician, this is the kind of music that you make. If you are not a musician, you still make this kind of music in whatever you do and inspire similar enthusiasm in those with whom you work or live or socialize.’

And the Moksha section about our spiritual life is even more explicit.

‘In the music-dance ritual of ancient China, where ancestors were invited back to dance and sing, the music and dance, so in tune with the rhythms and shapes of the great flux, could weave itself through the barriers of Time and reach into the past. Joined with their re-appeared ancestors in transcendent enjoyment of the same music, the participants were united with the One and All.’

If I read your writings of the second day, it feels the ancestors, whether saints or pirates, were gathering to join you. And so will I! At a distance, I feel very connected and close!

Warm embraces,

Guyx

PS: Thanks for repairing the pencil!

 

thursday, july 21^st 2016

First practice, all together.

 

Today, I joined you and we practiced together for the first time. On the way to the site, I was reminded how the heath already prepares and grounds our bodies.

While Lia and Lin went to get the blue chair, Arianna and I taped some of the paper to the railing, letting the wind play with it, like Tibetan flags but this time pure white, not yet written upon.

Arianna started, picking up with her body the vibrations of the wind playing with the paper. Lin joined her and there was a dialogue about seeing and not seeing. Then Lia went in, who was in a story telling mood, telling stories of the city.

When I finally joined, I discovered the quality of the tape and we continued to create spider webs, mesh works, all through the practice. When it was my turn to run the pathway in the shape of the infinity sign, I picked up a pile of debris, colored cables and created with them a huge peacock tail. Much later, I found myself lying on the ground underneath a new web, that Arianna had spun for me, going through some epileptic fits, until my feet were able to find their way up in the sky, breaking the spell of the web.

In between, black and white, male and female changed roles, honoring the great Lemesos’ tradition of carnival. Lin and Lia got themselves black beards and moustaches and I got a pair of tits and a mini-skirt so that Lia could chase me around and squeeze my ass, while Arianna run off in the distance with the paper I had given her to guard. She returned as a bride.

 

friday, july 22^nd 2016

First performance

 

It was wonderful to perform Rewriting Distance again for a larger audience. Although the site was challenging, we succeeded in making it very inclusive and intimate.

There were a lot of kids and they seemed fully engaged, which is always a good sign. I developed a touching relationship with Marius, the half of a pair of male twins, who offered me his teddy bear in consolation.

We tricked Lia in having to start and she created out of that a brilliant way to address the audience, both individually and as a community: ‘Do I know you?’ ‘You, I know only for 40 percent.’

From there on, we oscillated between the comic, the light hearted and the serious: waving an SOS-flag for Leme-SOS; running for each other and taping myself in with a corset to lose some weight or to change gender again.

I love this place and its people!

 

saturday, july 23^rd 2016.

 

On Saturday we did two more performances. We found both an ease and a depth in the practice: continuing to draw outlines of bodies on the platform, playing with gender and androgyny and running together. Highlighting Lia’s original question: ‘Who will we run for?’

notes

lin snelling

We began with the moving and resting warm up; we did Miranda’s exploration of

the space, and wrote from there.

Miranda’s exploration: (a stain in the concrete that looked like a solar system and a labyrinth.)

it came from cement

it’s round

like a solar system

… it is a solar system

a printing into lines that live and breathe

and become,

a floating surface,

golden staining

into the floor

perspectives evolving

visions changing

how something found on the ground

rests me

into a world

of imagined night sky

…. my own vision, my own eyes

now seeing differently

gazing through the

magic telescope that is this staining.

First practice: (we have paper on the soft concrete and scrolls that hang onto the railings …

everything today was so much affected by shadow and wind)

blue

blue is me

blue is you

blue is the balance of “betweening”

the shadows cast their own moving.

As Arianna sets us out

into the lines of how a shadow

lives,

her own paper net casts us

into the capture

of a cinematic visioning …

into a song with Lia

that comes from the noisy garden machines.

how slow is blue?

how fast are you?

how off and in balance

is the crazy story

of being present.

we/I/See

…. this sea

next to me

this blue

next to you

this shadow

in the breeze

caught on paper,

writing as the shadows

we cast,

attempts to capture

what

is always moving.

…. the Medi-terran-ean …

the middle of the world,

is this where the sea is?

My mothers name is Kindersley

…is this where she is?

My name is Ancaster

…is this where I am

She is Limassol

and my fathers name is Limassol …

she is a brunette

she dances like an Arab

she studied ballet

her father is a lawyer

and her great grandfather is from here

Where is here in the middle of the sea?

the Medi-terran-ean

(from medium “middle” + terra “land”)

hello

hi

hi

hi

will you run the marathon for me?

yes,

and I will finish slowly ….

yes,

I will run for you and

yes

the sea in me …

Androgyny

(Jenny and Andrew in the middle of the sea)

How the city called Limassol goes out and in

(“ we like to be outside”)

We are in Limassol and we are outside…

day three

an art pile

   of sounding and sea

and birds and

debris:

   in four (4) parts …

the first part

   is a drawing with breeze

and it has a nest of paper and a plea

” you are forgiven”

                 says the sea.

the second part

   is a confession

yes, the sea has sinned the most

     so the pirate comes

           and she really

                 sets the story straight,

                       gives us a lesson on the

practical absurdity of art.

and

part three

     well,

part three

      returns and remembers to balance the pens

with tape and patience

     breaking them in two after drawing.

part four

     takes the piss out of it all

and becomes a song with some romantic lyrics,

too embarrassing to write down,

     but we sing them gusto and carry on ….

day four

(We do 2 half hour practices … Guy has joined us here in Limassol!)

#1

Arianna with paper

Lin with Arianna

Lia with questions of sun and stars

Guy with his back to the net

#2

Lia begins with water stories

and I receive a kiss from her

through a canvas frame …

Arianna walks the distance and

Guy becomes a spider.

7 pm performance. (We arrive at 5:30 pm; get 2 chairs from the café; and set up. We do a brief vocal warm up … many people come!

The audience, they are so close. We are altogether, all the time.)

How much do we

know each other,

and what percentage of you

is man,

is woman,

is the wavering that is

between the worlds of sea, star and sun.

How about it baby … Let’s dance!

Will this save us?

On your mark … get set … go!

6:30 pm performance

he rolls underneath the echo

the sound …

she said it,

the sound,

she named it,

the memory

she gave it to us to touch …

he took a line,

into the air,

and swung it around

he was on the other side,

she took his line and

with it fashioned

a way to capture the breeze,

she called to it …

Lassoing it down.

She captured it carefully.

he she and we

danced on the sea

feet stepping on stones of history

hands clasping and breaking repeatedly.

7:30 pm performance

This is Limassol.

these are her stories.

this, our, her, him, she, they, we

sing into the sea

we are waves wavering memory …

hands stain

with graphite

and rub into concrete

graffiti scares and burnishes

… skin as ground,

and sexy re-invented gender and hilarity.

it is between

a breeze,

it is a touch to the cheek

it is a kiss,

it has a mother tongue,

a belly button,

a solar system;

that dazzles and struts and sings.

It is round

it is sound

it is found

We run as fast as we can.

Returning exhausted …

Limassol is here, between you and me and the sea …