“I am drawn deeper down into what is most essential.”
—Terre Vandale
Site-specific dance. Xiamen, China. Terre Vandale
a guest blog post by Terre Parker Vandale
It is so exciting to see so many free opportunities to see work in museums, hear free concerts, attend free workshops, and take lessons, all via Zoom. The pull to partake in everything is palpable. But…it isn’t for me.
I am teaching and working remotely and homeschooling a preschooler and I am the only adult in my household. (Deep breath)
Before coronavirus I was in deep developing a new dance work with three incredible collaborators. My studio building is now closed. We are now sending each other drawings and poems as we develop our roles independently…when we have time.
I tried making a dance video with my son the other day. I set up a beautiful shot, walked in the frame, had four seconds to consider what I would do, and then I was warming hands, wiping a scrape, and building with rocks. It became another “Four Minutes of Mothering” (a duet we performed when my kid was two, which consisted of me attempting to dance responsiveness in the midst of more than a dozen stuffed animals). The next take, days later, was more “successful,” but it taught me less.
I am a teaching artist by training and so I am living arts integration. I am in a 24 hour collaborative improvisation, keeping an eye out for teachable moments and responding with love at every turn (whenever humanly possible). We are creating found object mobiles, countless collages, life size self-portraits, and brush forts wrapped in yarn. We are painting with trucks/balls/brushes. We are dancing in the living room, me doing Zumba for a hot second (there! online content I’m ingesting!) while my kid taps or “clacks” as he says. We are singing. I am sharing more of what I know in between cooking, cleaning, working, despairing, fearing, and celebrating the precious moment. I am witnessing him play - more solo play than he’s ever experienced - and getting to know him, and wiping cuts, and affirming him, and explaining the “bad flu” and explaining how his grandmothers can send him love through the air. This is art. It is messy and non-consumable. It sure as hell doesn’t fit in a Zoom session (and I use all my screen time for work anyway.)
Beach experiment. Photo: Terre Vandale
I am in such a privileged position. I am beyond grateful to have health and my job. And yet, this situation is still incredibly hard. My art right now cannot be for anyone else. It is for my life. I need all my resources just to weather this time and to keep steady as I steer my family’s ship. Right now, when my art can be gifted to someone else, it is for an audience of one - my kid. (Gratitude to my dear teacher Anna Halprin for a way to understand this LifeArt Process.)
In the second week of isolation, my FOMO blossomed, but then I saw capitalism trying to talk to me through my desire. The idea that any of us should be able to continue business as usual while being primary caregivers and trying to interrupt contagion at every inroad is simply ludicrous. Now, in week seven of isolation, with talk of reopening circling and people around me appearing to function near to normal, I am drawn deeper down into what is most essential.
Journal excerpt. "For Her" self portrait series. Terre Vandale
I claim this space for non-production. For retreat. For compassion. For caregiving. I claim this space and time for being good enough as I am, for small “a” art, for trusting that something inside of me is growing, is becoming, something that I need to be for what will come later.
I was looking for a way to bridge the parts of me that are artist, professional, and mother and look, here it is (a bit more dramatic than I’d hoped). My mother, a wiser feminist than me, recently revealed she is playing with thinking of this time as a workshop she signed up for to learn, what? That is to be discovered. We are thinking of this as an initiation. Into the next versions of ourselves.
I imagine when this is all over my dancing will be richer, my professional work will be more compassionate, I will be smarter and see the connections between things more clearly. I don’t need to watch anything or do anything to make that happen, just live through this. Keep making art. Small art that no one sees, or maybe just one small person.
I hope that when you see me perform, finally whenever we get to share that piece, you’ll know there is something under the surface, some lived experience that you cannot share, but you feel it vibrating. So, I won’t offer any Zoom workshops while I’m teaching/mothering/working/living in isolation, but I have a gift for you…later. I look forward to receiving the gift you are becoming in secret, too.
“Simply Be” watercolor on paper, 5x7 inches, painting by Lauren Kindle, Words by Terre Parker Vandale
Terre Parker Vandale lives in Western Massachusetts where she directs Mae/Movement Arts Ensemble and serves as Program Coordinator for the UMass Arts Extension Service. A former principal member of Anna Halprin’s Dance Company, Terre has presented choreographic and video work nationally and internationally since 2005. Terre’s artistic practice encompasses environmental and stage performance, video, visual scores, installation, participatory ritual, arts integrated curriculum, and teaching in a wide range of settings from museums to community centers to universities. Her current research, Evolving Identities, emerges from the experience of motherhood to explore the interaction of literal and figurative social identities during life transitions through movement and writing.
Terre’s newest site-specific performance, For Her, is slated to premiere in October 2020. For Her awakens the body’s kinship with the living land through archetypal exploration in a garden of elder trees. You can support For Her production costs and dance studio rent by sending a gift to @TerreVandale via Venmo.