Terese Capucilli You’re hearing me talk about the body trudging through something and we can think about it that way, too, so it’s symbolic. It doesn’t have to be literal, but it can be; you’re seeing images like your son. And there were women that did. I could view the bench as almost a home in some cases. You feel can very naked in terms of a solo, so having the bench provided a place to continually go back and forth from, and that gave it me strength. The bench was used for many things: the home, and the birthing place, a grave. It’s symbolic for family, or comfort, or a place to mourn; it’s so many things. The feeling of carrying that weight [of the bench], and that pain on your shoulders; it’s the same thing, even though it’s not religious. So when you think about it, are you really asking me if it’s religious, or if maybe it’s the weight of the pain that people bear the cross of. We can carry a cross all the time, but it has nothing to do with religion, because we all have crosses to bear, don’t we. It was a very successful piece for me.

Lea Clay is a Comparative Literature major at New York University and has focused her cultural and literary studies primarily on theology and Spanish while simultaneously fulfilling pre-med requirements. Upon graduation in May of 2014, she plans to spend a year dedicating her life to contemporary dance before beginning medical school fall of 2015.

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