2012's DONATION LETTER

Dear Friends,

Just 2 short years ago, in January of 2010 I directed my first legitimate theatrical endeavor, Fred Giacinto’sMOMENTS AND LEMONS.  We ran for 4 weeks to sold-out shows at Theater for the New City.  It was a huge success for all involved.  It let me know that this is what I needed to be doing at this moment in time. 

My mission as a Director is to provide a safe space to create a performance that moves an audience.  For me it always comes back to the words and illuminating the writer’s vision, by finding actors who know their craft and have a propensity to share and learn through the rehearsal and performance process.  I am also invested in providing affordable theatre as well as paying those who work with me for their creativity and commitment.  I like to work fast, as I feel it keeps everyone alive and present to the constantly changing possiblities.  It is always about trust.  My process is to have several informal read throughs where we just discuss what is gleaned with each new revisiting of  the script.  Then we start ‘mapping’ out the space and place of the work.  I encourage the performers to do - to try -new things and approaches constantly.  I have an overall vision for the piece that I allow the performers to work their way into, as opposed to merely proscribing directives.  This process forges a trust and a sense of ownership by the performers that supercedes merely me dictating my vision.  I am always interested in the audience using their imaginations, to be active participants in the performance.  

You have been awesome!  And your unstintingly generous praise and encouragement keeps us going.  Together, we are forming a great theatre community, one that provides thought provoking entertainment for the audience, experience for the actors, and keeps us enthralled in this art form that I think is the only one left that requires us all to suspend our disbelief in the moment and be willing participants in creating a future together.  And to be doing this along side Lulu has made it even more special.  I have said I feel like I am still able to take my child to the playground.  It is awesome!  This coming year promises to be just as exciting and to take us to the next level.  The playwright Steven Fechter, upon seeing our DESDEMONA, contacted me and offered his new play to US for the World Premiere!  These are indeed exciting times!

It is with this in mind that I am reaching out, to those of you who supported us so generously over the course of last year (again THANK YOU!), and hopefully a few new supporters too.  Last year we asked for donationsby the project.  This year I want to make ONE ASK ONLY.  The average cost of the four productions that I self produced in 2011 was $7500. This included: the theater rental, stipends of $500 for each performer and transportation. And thanks to your donations and ticket sales we did what is every producer’s dream – WE BROKE EVEN.  

Thanks to our wonderful partnership with Peter Mercurio and his OTHER SIDE PRODUCTIONS, we are able to use his Production Company as our umbrella for funding thus providing each donator a TAX DEDUCTABLE LETTER for their records.  This means the world to us and I am hoping that you will take this opportunity to make a DONATION that will be TAX DEDUCTABLE and make this a WIN-WIN for the theater community. You will also be listed as a donor in every program for the duration of the year. 

Here are two simple ways you can donate.  You can send a check made out to OTHER SIDE PRODUCTIONS and earmarked for FOGARTY to the address above or you can go to the Other Side Productions website 
http://www.othersideproductions.org/support/donate_fogarty.html.


Thank you for you consideration and I look forward to seeing you out there in the dark - using your imaginations - exploring the world through the performing arts.

Thom Fogarty
Director and Producer

That seed that was planted in 2010 has grown and grown: 

2010

MOMENTS AND LEMONS by Fred Giacinto, 4 weeks at Theater for the New City

BEING HEARD:THE LILLIAN SMITH STORY by Lulu Fogarty, Showcase Production at Dixon Place [Sold Out        Performance]

BAD CONNECTIONS? by Michael Levesque, at Theatre 54 @ Shetler Studios, The Hollywood and Edmondton Fringe Festivals 

HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, by Melissa Skirboll at The Bridge Theater for Third Eye Theater Co.

CROSS/HATCH by Peter Mercurio, a Reading at Judson Memorial Church

MargOH! Channing is TIPSY! at The Duplex

2011

EURYDICE, by Sarah Ruhl, 2 weeks at The Bridge Theater @ Shetler Studios*

HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, by Melissa Skirboll, 2 weeks at The Gene Frankel Theater as part of the Planet Connections Theater Festivity

MargOH! Channing is TIPSY!, at The Duplex

IN THE NAME OF GOD by Peter-Adrian Cohen, based on the Helen Whitney PBS/Frontline documentary FAITH AND DOUBT AT GROUND ZERO, one special 9-11 performance at Judson Memorial Church*

DESDEMONA, by Paula Vogel, 2 weeks at The Bridge Theater @ Shetler Studios*

LILLIAN SMITH:BEING HEARDby Lulu Fogarty, one performance at the United Solo Festival* and one performance at Syracuse Stage for the Drama Dept. of Syracuse University.*

BAD CONNECTIONS? by Michael Levesque, at The Bridge Theater @ Shetler Studios,

MargOH! Channing is TIPSY!, at The Duplex

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2012:

January    
BAD CONNECTIONS? by Michael Levesque, at Theatre 54 @ Shetler Studios

February   
10 TALL TALES ABOUT THE MEN I LOVE, based on a short story by Ronn Smith and adapted for             the stages by Thom Fogarty, at Judson Memorial Church for 2 special Magic Time! Performances.*

March       
MargOH! Channing is TIPSY!, the Saga Continues, at Dixon Place.

April         
THE ARTIFACTS by Steven Fechter, author of THE WOODSMAN (with Kevin Bacon). This is the World Premiere production of this exciting new work.  It will run for 2 weeks at The Bridge Theater @ Shetler Studios*

May          
BAD CONNECTIONS? by Michael Levesque, 7 performances at The Orlando Fringe Festival

July          
BAD CONNECTIONS? by Michael Levesque, 5 performances at The Toronto Fringe Festival and in Rochester, NY at the CABARET DOWNSTAIRS THEATER http://downstairscabaret.org/CONNECTIONS%20Website.html

October              
THE MENTEE by Steven Fechter, 12 performances at The Bridge @ Shetler Studios  Oct. 17-28.


Press for MOMENTS AND LEMONS

"Moments and Lemons is one of the most worthwhile theater experiences imaginable. The performances are incredibly strong and the direction is satisfyingly simple. This simplicity facilitates the telling of a story that is difficult to confront but necessary to hear.’’ 
- Kelly Aliano for OFFOFFONLINE

“Moments And Lemons is honest, brave theater skillfully, and masterfully directed by New York performing arts veteran Thom Fogarty. To say this is thought provoking and clever direction is an understatement of biblical proportions. Fogarty has drawn upon all of his many gifts and talents and they all culminate here, where he has reached an artistic pinnacle… ” 
- Norman Maine for Soho Journal Online.

Press for BAD CONNECTIONS?  (see REVIEW section)

·          "★★★★★ Mesmerizing Performance" –  EDMONTON JOURNAL

·          "★★★★★ A miracle of theatre. Cosentino is a master of his craft"  – Edmonton SUN 

·          "PITCH-PERFECT PERFORMANCE!" – Bryant Kirkland 

·          "A Truly Satisfying Piece of Theatre" – Ashley Steed, Los Angeles Theater Review

·          "REMARKABLE!" – Peter Shaffer (Amadeus)

Press for DESDEMONA 

“Director Thom Fogarty has a gift for finding reimagined works by hugely talented writers and reimagining them one step further with his own quirky and dramatic twists. This visionary director also has an inherent gift for making the very most with the very least by staging his productions with minimal scenery and maximum storytelling. I believe one of his greatest gifts is being able to corral a gifted cast to carry out his vision. I don’t want to give much away here but the lest me say that the last two or three minutes of this show are simply dramatically and artistically breathtaking! ” 
– Mark DeMaio, editor of Soho Journal Online.

Press for THE ARTIFACTS (see FULL REVIEW in REVIEW section)

Awards

HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, was nominated for 4 Planet Connection Festival awards, 3 for acting and one for Lighting Design.

·          Won Outstanding Supporting Actress – Maureen Van Trease

·          Won Outstanding Lighting Designer – Thom Fogarty

* Indicates Productions that were self-produced.
modifier.

My Life: A Lecture Demonstration
A Sermon for Judson Memorial Church
July 21, 2002
Thom Fogarty

 I approached this service like the choreographer that I am. I turned to my life and in doing so it was a year's worth of observations I wanted to share. Like a shaman, the witchdoctor that B. W. Thuesen spoke of in the opening. There is so much I have to impart and I rarely get called upon to do so. After this, some of you may say "shut up and dance" - but hey, as I pointed out in this very space last summer, this space where the rules of what was dance were blurred - I am dancing, as fast as I can. Last year I summed up my life as a dancer and touched upon WHY I dance. But as the events of this past year have made clear, I need to do more. I have this urge to share, maybe too much, but it is so fleeting our time here and HERE. So here goes..........

PART ONE: ON EDUCATION

As some of you know I have been working in the New York City Public School System for the last three years. I was hoping to be a full-fledged teacher this year with my own classroom. But things don't always work out the way we would like. I have been a full-time substitute at several different schools. I have also been teaching workshops for parents and teachers through the NYC School Leadership Teams Initiative. Workshops on "team building", "conflict resolution", "communication skills", and the like. So I have a pretty clear picture of the entire system and it is this view that is driving me out of the classroom. I love the children but can no longer abide and fight within a system that strives for mediocrity. What has made this an eye-opening experience is the various levels that teachers are operating at around the city. Because of my work in Parent Advocacy over the last 9 years it has always been clear to me how behind the curve parents were to how this structure works, and it was painfully evident that major pockets of this city have been neglected and forgotten about (DUMMY-ED DOWN if you will).

Well, it was not until I was in classes filled with these teachers, who are trying to make sure they are in compliance with the 2003 mandate that all teachers have a Masters Degree, that I was struck with the severity of the problem. To hear my colleagues and their weekly testimonials in these classes about having no support or support systems in their respective schools is a disgrace. To hear the level of discourse is also alarming. This is when it hit me that these very people - who are now teachers - came from this very system. They were in the last generations of students failed by a dilapidated and deteriorating system that would sooner end social promotion than creatively work within to scaffold the supports needed to make sure all students have a chance to succeed. They are, by example, a cross section of the failure to educate and motivate students to be life-long learners. For some speak of it as merely a means to an end. This should not be.

Some of these teachers cannot read the book. They cannot write a paper. They cannot participate in even the most basic of conversations around issues of implementation and of curriculum and delivery strategies. How is this acceptable? This means that for years these people have been sitting in their classrooms just doing what they have been told to do. Not seeking any actual understanding of what it is they are doing, just delivering whatever strategies are currently in vogue and sanctioned by the powers that be. If these classes are truly representative of who is in the classroom these days, then no wonder we have the diverse and adverse receptions to the educational instruction our students are receiving.

We know all the reasons for this - lack of money, lack of energy, lack of an appropriate pool of people who can be lured into a low paying, thankless job that provides little or no support. This goes to one of my favorite quotes, from Bruce Joyce, "Educational change is technically simple and socially complex." We know that smaller class sizes, more buildings, fewer standardized tests and higher salaries are needed. We can look at test scores and figure out which test to give. We know all the technical stuff. But how do we go about it? Where does the paradigm for change come from? When do we, as a society, begin to take responsibility for the product - our children in the system? Thus the socially complex part, we have the tools, now we need to change the mindset. It is people who get in the way, making it socially complex.

(Taking a deep breath) I propose that the union is truly an antiquated construct as it currently operates. Do not get me wrong, I am not anti-union, I am merely suggesting that things have changed drastically in the workplace since the early 1900's when protectionism was indeed needed. This does not exist in the workplace for most people these days. So why is so much emphasis placed on it now? The union (actually the union's position) is like an uninvited gorilla at the party. In each school building in this city there are teachers, whom everyone knows are just there doing their job = no more, no less. Teachers in those buildings discuss this freely. And this is somehow sanctioned. It has become OK. I say get these people out. Some have a less than adequate education themselves. They have thus been delivering a form of institutionalized DUMMY-ING DOWN education to the children in their care. DO NOT GET ME WRONG, THE MAJORITY OF TEACHERS OUT THERE ARE FABULOUS AND HAVE KEPT UP WITH THE TIMES. However, if there is even one person in each building who is not even merely adequate - what does that say about the system? Let's see, at 1 teacher, times 30 students, times 1,100 schools - that's still TOO MANY. Are we to except this as OK, this less that adequate education? (Taking another deep breath) I know I am touching on very sensitive ground here but we have to put this out on the table once and for all. It is what is keeping us all down. By not showing the parents what is possible, it seems to me that it is all too easy for everything to continue to be couched along racist lines. I am so tired of this argument. However this is truly the only level at which parents have been able TO argue at for years now = because the $$$ does seem to follow along this kind of all too predictable path. How can any of the much larger agenda items be considered if we do not have an honest discussion of the racial divide pervasive in this system?

I have heard Rep. Steven Sanders say we should "invest in public education". I suggest changing those words around to INVEST IN EDUCATING THE PUBLIC. I propose MODELING WHAT WORKS. How about focusing on getting parents (THE PUBLIC) out to see what works. Take them to schools that are working. Create partnerships between schools, cross-districts and/or even beyond. I truly see this as a chance to educate parents in ways that cannot only benefit them, but their children as well. While in the classroom these last 3 years, it is so disheartening to see so many children coming to school late DAILY, take time out to go on vacations, show up seemingly when they want to and so on, AND these are the children that more often than not receive the "AT RISK" notices and then somehow get passed on. Proving that it is not just the parents but teachers who are duplicitous as well. It seems that what is proper is not part of the mix, and I suggest that this is because when the system started falling apart, and the children began to be passed on year after year through lax policies and the indifference of pedagogy, again I understand that they too have been beaten down through years of not being appreciated and/or paid an appropriate living wage for the jobs they are providing, it only stands to reason that the ball gets "dropped" and people begin to get by as best they can. So children are coming from homes where the importance of education is really not at the forefront - because they are doing OK with the less than adequate education they received, so their children will be fine too - JUST GETTING BY.

It is cultural in several senses: first, the diverse ethnic backgrounds that we have in this vast system. Second, it is the culture of each individual school. WE HAVE TO ADDRESS BOTH OF THESE IF WE ARE TO AFFECT CHANGE. It was stated that "education is ALL day, what happens at home?" = parents need to be educated to a level of concern that has been missing. You legally shut parents out for 30+ years and suddenly expect them to show a level of concern? They must be shown by example first. The schools that are not working have had no models to follow, they are merely out there operating in a vacuum. Programs are brought in to change the instruction for the children all the time and yet parents are treated the same and poorly at that. WHERE ARE PROGRAMS FOR THE PARENTS TO BE BROUGHT UP TO SPEED? I have seen the thirst that parents have once given true and sound information that they can use to navigate the system. And by linking it to everyday life, as I do in the parent workshops, we are changing lives - exponentially. Oh, I could go on and on but I will leave you with this, "When you take a child by the hand, you take a parent by the heart." (an old Spanish saying).


[read as a pentecostal snake handling preacher]

"With the word of God you can put the devil to flight! This thing is GOOD. It'll make you speak in tongues. Of all the ways in which multiculturalism pretends that minority children do not need a traditional education - indeed, that they can better protect their integrity and identity without one - the cruelest is the crusade against linguistic assimilation. AKIIIII, AKIIIIIIII, AKIIIIIIII. Standard English is, will continue to be, and in a majority opinion SHOULD be the essential minimum for participation in the economic, political, and cultural life of AMERICA. AKIIIIIII, AKIIIIIIIII, AKIIIIIIIII. This thing is REAL!!!!!"

PART TWO: RELIGION

Although I am rarely here, I have been to so many events and get togethers with members of this congregation over the last year, that I do not feel as though I do not come to Judson. I see those that are near and dear to me socially, outside of the confines and dictates of religion-be it organized or not. Having been raised a Catholic, I bolted from that mind meld at the age of 16, when the Father spent his entire Christmas spiel on the need for more money to come in for their new housing. This was just as Watergate was breaking and a sideline to all of this was the little known fact of how much of Washington D.C. property was actually owned by the Catholic Church. So my newly opened conspiracy-minded self said HEY what gives? Religion pretty much slid of the map for me at that point. I found myself here years later, as I stated last year knowing of Judson through my dance history, through Leslie's help, as the man in the nursery. I wondered what was going on upstairs and gradually over the years I made my way up and found it to be an eye-opening experience. I remember Howard reading something from the Village Voice that had incensed him, and cussing about it, and I somehow felt home. I remember Al making the piano weep with the blues. I remember nights on the Prostitution Van with Arlene, and the women, and feeling what true love was. I remember outlandish performances and 'craze wa' moments that elevated this place to an exalted level for me. But things ebb and flow, and with Howard's retiring and Arlene's passing an era came to an end. Things change. Fine. I mourn the loss. I can't say it was ever the religion that brought me upstairs to begin with, but rather the lack of it, in many ways. The difference for me then, was at least there was a heart and soul to the place that kept everything pumping along. It was the knowing that all this was able and propelled by one groups concerns and connections to their own doctrines. I remember once screwing it up when asked by someone to describe what Judson was like and instead of saying it was "non-denominational" I said it was "non-dimensional". DOH! This place obviously satisfies and covers a lot of bases for many people, but I for one have to keep my distance - for now. Maybe I am just having a mid-life crisis and reverting to my conspiracy theory days, but I feel, once again, left out. Ebb and flow. Here's to change.

"There's gonna come a day when the bellies of the earth will open up and some'll be set free and some'll be devoured! And, oh Lord, on that day, there's gonna be some that'll be taken out of that prison and put back in the heart of GOD. Where they belong! Oh the earth is gonna shake! It'll tear the chains from the wall that's been hold' in you down. And the sky will turn red as blood......and there's nothing the world can do to prevent it! The world will have no power against it! They'll have no power against it!!!

PART THREE: 9-1-1    
Poem read during ON THE VERGE : A dance I created for a Benefit for the First Responders, Nov. 2001

there were two there. twins. in a bipolar existence. yin and yang. i heard it you know. from the beginning. plane. down sixth. down sixth? not an angel. flying too close to the ground. outside i rushed. to see one tower. not quite right. and we gathered. non-believers. chatting nervously. not believing. then ellen said "what's that plane doing so close?!" then a fireball. and. from my safe distance. confetti filled the sky. And the non-believers were struck dumb. we knew this was not right. no accident. and life changed. i went inside. called leslie. "i can't believe this". i returned. back in the crowd with a disposable camera. i took pictures. I have photos. time passed. we gained a false sense. then the unthinkable. one crumbled from view. one. Then the other. there were two. there.

This piece is for our friends and neighbors at Fire Squad 18.

GOTTA DANCE
A Sermon for Judson Memorial Church July 15, 2001
Thom Fogarty 

Gotta Dance When I think about dance, it goes to my essence – it's as though it were bound by DNA to be a part of my very being. I can't remember a time I didn't dance. Standing on an ottoman in my grandmother's slip doing a hootchie cootchie dance for the church ladies at the age of four, whirling until I collapsed in a heap and rolled down the hills at 6, lying on the floor high kicking with the JUNE TAYLOR dancers at 7, watching the old musicals with my mother and when I was finally old enough to stay up and see all the good stuff like LOLA FALANA and the Gold Diggers - well I was in heaven. Thank god for television, for really this was the only dance a boy being raised in the south was exposed to outside of church socials where the fox trot was downright heathenous.

But all that began to change by the mid 60's with the advent of a new found freedom of expression, it wasn't just in the streets but in the clubs and on stage and screen too. As our cultural values changed so did the mind set of dance and indeed the very form and function of dance. So HULLABALOO and AMERICAN BANDSTAND and SOUL TRAIN allowed me to vent in a new way. From the Twist, the Dirty Dog, the Alligator, to the Four Corners, the Running Man, the Harlem, the Cripple, break dancing, hip hop - to raving. Social dancing was freeing to the body but what I embarked on as an art was freeing to the mind. The creating of dance is like my mind on drugs. Now mind you this was never a considered something a boy would or could do. So when I got the chance, well to steal a line for the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW "Hot patootie bless my soul I really love that rock n' roll" n' leap n' plié n' spin n' jeté and I still do.

All this began in 1973, when I went off to OSU to study ART. The Dance Dept. had courses that fulfilled the phys. ed. requirement so I signed up in a heartbeat. During this time TWYLA THARP's troupe come through and it blew my mind. I had been doing that in my head for years and never thought anyone actually did it and put it out there. I had an aptitude for dance and was talked into auditioning for the Department. I got in. Dance History was a required three year course and what we learned right off the bat was what was going on then. And the most recent history was of the HAPPENINGS and the likes of THE JUDSON DANCE THEATRE. I ate it up. LUCINDA CHILDS, YVONNE RAINER, DAVID GORDON, JAMES WARING,STEVE PAXTON, JILL JOHNSTON and TRISHA BROWN to name a few. With my innate ability I was able to get through the strict four year program in three years and couldn't wait to get to NYC. Once here I almost gave up dance for when you have only one real Mecca for your art and everyone who has that I'M THE ONLY ONE GOING THROUGH THIS feeling arrives it can be a little cut throat to say the least. It was down right nasty. You would show up at an audition and be #489 of 500+. "We will call you." "Next." I went to Joyce Trisler's classes with my little note from a teacher who had been in the company as an introduction and realized it didn't matter cuz by then she was a bit meshugana and second time that she hit me in the stomach to create that perfect contraction I booked. Thank god I had come with friends and we knew others who had come in the years before us so we had connections to play with folks who were experimenting in different modes of dance. So we were working at our art but not in our art, not just yet. I did however manage to find a Sunday morning job here in the nursery and will cherish the generation of "Judsonettes" I got to see grow up.

The things I have done in the name of dance. I was the Cherokee symbol of death in one of those historic outdoor dramas that theater majors flock to in the summer and as such I had the turning point moment in the show. It was billed as the largest outdoor air-conditioned theater was dug into a deep pit with a large center concrete stage and two revolving smaller stages on the sides where most of the "white man's" action took place. Us Indians and the war scenes took place on the big center stage. Well I had this moment in the show where I run around in a loin cloth and big feathered wings and mask in the pitch blackness (finally at about 10 PM in the middle of Oklahoma in a pit no less it is dark) carrying a torch. Well the cue that I was through and exiting was the sound of my feet running off over one of the smaller wooden revolving stages. This particular night the actor for the scene that was to revolve on as I ran off was late so he runs on to take his place stage manager assumes its me and gives the cue to revolve the scene on. As I climbed back up on to the stage from the front row of the audience, having flown through the air thirty feet after running into the revolving set, I hobbled off - the Indians - now on their "trail of tears" were reduced to doing a little stomp out the fire dance as my torch was actually hundreds of cotton balls soaked in alcohol. There were little balls of fire all over the stage. I laughed, I cried, I was out of the show for a week. Talk about what Sally Banes called dramatic deployment of dance materials.

Another time on tour in Germany, there was a mix up as to what type of group we were, going by the name of THE TROUBLEMAKERS, I guess confused the issue for the German sponsors who had us booked into a beer hall, an old pub and when we arrived and saw that our stage was a 10x10 raised platform with four microphones on it we fell out. Our choreographer, ever resourceful, managed to find the nearest purveyor of hash, a bizarre Afghani named ZOTI and we got totally ripped. We did the show, sans microphones, laughing our asses off every step of the way. The audience loved it, they lit sparklers when we finished. Hey it was 1983 and we were ROCK N' ROLL. That performance certainly went a long way toward challenging the social relations Sally Banes alluded to regarding post-modernism.

Once in London at the Dance Umbrella, out of sheer boredom, the choreographer dared me to do the opening 7 minutes of an hour long piece with a day cot we found in the dressing room strapped to my back. What a fool HE was for I upped the ante I did it with the cot on my back, a bag of chips in one hand and drinking from a big Fosters beer can in the other HA! I was deconstructing myself for the sake of the performance. In reviews I have been called a chubby Broadway show master, a truck driver with the cool of a Galouise cigarette hanging from his lip, an earth-mother goddess, a curiosity, a freakshow, and a baked potato that moves like the wind. Go figure.

And like Gracie Allen's character in A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS I have always done the work to become the one who is consumed or convinced of the world. For I have been fortunate to live out this life, so far anyway, taking on alternate personae, alternate worlds, alternate modes of being and inhabiting them for the sake of the performance. The fact that you the audience have been there - HERE - has been secondary. For it was part of the post-modern dictum that made that transference obsolete. It was Trisha Brown's rooftop dance, whereby dancers relayed movements over a 10 square block area of midtown, that changed everything for me at least. No one was there to see it. But it was still a performance. It was still a dance. That made history. And thus changed history. It was written about and now its history, it was the very point of post-modernism - that to take what was - history - and turn it on its head, thus making it while actually rewriting it. This is something we must not forget. Even in this place. History is meant to live. And living means change. I wonder who will come along and alter it next. I wanna be around, as one of my fave rave songs goes, to pick up the pieces. Cause putting them back together is what creation is all about.

I have danced professionally now for 27 years, and yes I'm still out there. I have done quite a few performances, both full evenings and as part of services here and have cherished every moment. In particular a performance that our dear Arlene asked me to do and that was the second World Aids Day, some of you may remember I did a cycle upstairs that repeated three times for our departed friends. What a beautiful evening. I thank you. All of this brought me here and it still does, though some of you may have no idea who the hell I am, I'm still here. Leadership may change and values - or should I say - what is valued - may come and go but what was created in this very room - in the form of HAPPENINGS, changed not just how dance was looked at but its very being. Its meaning. And in so doing reached out and touched/embraced the rebel/renegade in a southern boy like me.........And here I stand having pondered my very existence for weeks now as a prelude to this service. I feel as though I am dancing my way through this as well, only its the words that are spinning, jumping, jeteing, tripping, leaping, whirling and darting forth.

So began my education as a dancer for with all the arts, it seems to me that its a lifelong commitment to grow and thus learn to nurture the mind as well as the body. Sometimes the body has a mind of its own TIME as well as heartbreak and injuries can take a toll - but I gotta tell ya, there are times when I'm out there on the dance floor, whether its theatrically or recreationally, and my mind has no idea how old the body is - or lets just say it has a select amnesia. And I'm young again, beguiled again, bewitched and............... I GOTTA DANCE.


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The following were other aspects of the service that I selected and read.
New Testimony
An excerpt taken from James Waring's musings

First dance lesson: put your feet on the floor. Now, put you mind in you Feet. What's it like down there? What's it like, dancing on sharp knives? The same as any other dancing no doubt. A floor is what's under you; Footing; he has his feet on the ground. If I can be happy standing on one Foot, that's better. Next, on no feet, rising to heaven.

When does extravagance become a necessity? Extravagance is exorbitant, Outside the orbit, outside the circle. In The Bald Soprano Ionesco says, "Take a circle, caress it, and it will turn vicious." In A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, a Fred Astaire film of 1937, in the amusement park sequence, Gracie Allen runs in a circle, on a great, turning wheel, for a very long time. Later, off the wheel, she still runs. Throughout the film, Gracie shows us her world, she talks, sings, dances, mimes: we don't know whether to laugh or cry. It is real, but it is not our illusions, it is hers. Suddenly, our knowing is changed, our circling no longer makes sense, only Gracie's does, such is her center. Her world is the only possible world; its rules are inexorable. She does not convince, she is convinced. Her motive, simply, is the movement of spirit, the movement of mind, the spiraling or radiation of her belief from its unshakable center.

Post-modern testimony
Taken from Sally Banes "Earthly Bodies"

To say that dance is the art whose material is the human body is to restate the obvious. But it is also to reiterate dance's uniqueness and significance, and to understand why post-modern dance, which began with the Judson Dance Theater and its sources, has radically affected dance theory, performance, and style. For, ironically, although "post-modern" refers to the mode of theatrical dancing that chronologically followed classic modern dance and departed from its aesthetic canons, post modern dance is a "modernists" art, in that it acknowledges its materials and reveals its own essential qualities as an art form. The Judson Dance Theater was intensely engaged in an art-historical process that corresponded to modernist movements in visual, literary, and musical arts; it was simultaneously engaged in a dance-historical process that sought to free dance from its dependence on music and other arts. It was, thirdly, an extension of a social-historical process that began around 1900, in which women staked out a terrain - modern dance choreography - where they could operate as serious artists, using that medium traditionally disdained as a minor art and women's realm: the body. In making formal breaks from modern dance, post-modern dance raised certain questions about the body and the social relations expressed by the body that modern dance had generally approached indirectly through symbolic and dramatic deployment of dance materials. With post-modern dance, the subject of the artwork became the body and dancing itself.