work of Martha was over, and then it became even more mind, because then I had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I could just enhance my inner dialogue that was a necessity to bring the movement into a real necessity of the weeping and the whole sense of the hand—I particularly loved that image, and it took a while for me to figure out where we were going to put that attraction. Let me see what other kinds of questions you have. You ask what elements of the poem were included in the piece, and it is important to understand that there is no element of the poem that’s included in the piece. It sinks into your skin as you’re working on her work. As I said, the images, the mantras, the images that you find in researching something, whether I’m researching about the Spanish Civil War and Lorca, or whether I’m researching Jocasta or Oedipus, whatever the essence, it seeps into your skin as you’re learning a role, you see? So then, as an artist, you can bring in the essence of that role in a much larger archetypical way that’s much bigger than yourself. So it’s not you dancing something, but it’s bringing this much bigger thing forward. Lea Clay Can you talk about how you worked the movement with the music? With Deep Song, I really worked inside of the music because it had almost a static kind of quality in the music, itself; I had to work the musicality. The breath, actually, in the silences, was very important in Deep Song, in how I would work the silences in between the music. I didn’t want to go on every single phrase of the music, because it would be way too static. I had to think about how to approach the movement. And in terms of working with Martha, I had to do that for her, because she was sitting in a chair and I had to connect the movement musically in the way that I felt it rhythmically in my body, according to what was happening in the music. I think that was one thing Martha really appreciated about me, and has said in the past,
198