Melecio Estrella. Photo by Jessica Swanson.
Where We Find Ourselves
Memories of Improvisations
By Melecio Estrella
1998
Physically negotiating and communicating through touch, weight grounded in our feet, spines are organized, leg power recruited to do the heavy lifting, hands gripping metal and plastic...
It takes six of us to get the generator, large speakers, and turntables down the steep uneven steps to the soft sand edge of the ocean at an undisclosed location. Once all the cables are connected, a sure voiced woman who is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology pours gasoline into the generator and says, “Give thanks for the blood of our mother.” This is burned into my 19 year old mind as I think of how this fuel is an offering, how our all night dance on the beach is an offering, how the use of petroleum can be reverent.
The group becomes 50 people strong under the moon; we arrange ourselves in a circle. We hold hands, we listen to the ocean to our west, we listen to each other, we pray. We listen to the DJ start to spin deep pulsing electronic music. The dance takes over, we share organic fruit under the moon, we snuggle in piles of sandy blankets next to a fire. When the sun comes up, the music is still thumping.
2013
Our toes articulate inside our shoes, our steps are entrained in the same rhythm. Our hearing perks up, instigating a spinal twist to see what’s behind us. Hand slides inside pocket, hand reaches to grab car door handle...
We fold down the seats of the rental car, so we can all face each other. When on tour, one of the best places to sing at this hour is in the car. With intimate and muffled acoustics we try to harmonize, we fail, we laugh, we try again and again, until surprisingly, we hit a harmony that feels like opening a door to a blaring world where there is only sunlight. All three of us are stunned and quiet for a moment. We laugh more, get out of the car to walk, run and dance through a random neighborhood. We stumble upon a creek, and make our way up it in the dark slowly and physically sensitive because we can't really see. We hear the loud dull moan of bullfrogs. Sitting with the bullfrogs, we simply listen before we add our own closed mouth dull moaning. We should probably get back to our hotel rooms before the sun comes up.
2020
Weight of the body spreading horizontally, gravity has a loud voice. Lying down, rolling from side body to back body, breathing wide, opening eyes to see the ceiling. Extending arms and spreading eyebrows with a yawn, sliding on sheets to spiral up, sitting in bed...
In a predawn slowness, I put on multiple layers of warm clothes as I hear the rustling of other dancers in the house getting up to join our sunrise walk. We are in a winter dance making residency at the Marin Headlands and have the privilege of a house to live in and a studio to dance in. We step outside as the sunrise begins to make the fog glow around us. We are still in the liminal space of waking as we walk to the beach. Monterey Cypress, Eucalyptus, Banana Slug, Coyote, Willow, Coffee Berry, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron. All of these life forms are growing, moving, shedding, feeding, dying. We get to the beach, we listen to the ocean, we are blanketed with the relentless movement of the surf. We dance. We improvise. We don’t talk to each other. The ocean has a loud voice. We listen.
Melecio Estrella is a dance artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is artistic director of BANDALOOP, co-director of Fog Beast and a longtime member of the Joe Goode Performance Group. Over the last 18 years he has collaborated on numerous site specific dance works in urban and wild spaces globally. His work has been commissioned by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Opera Center, Dancers’ Group, The Headlands Center for the Arts and universities and high schools in the Bay Area.
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