Tag Archives: photo Ron Yeh

Why Don’t We Do It At The Fringe

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“Higher Ground” Butoh Dance Theater By Helen Thorsen

With dancers: Mary Cutrera, Briana Jones, Lin Lucas, Alan Sutherland

Thursday Sept 20th 6:00 pm

Friday & Saturday Sept 21st & 22nd at 7:30 pm

Sunday Sept 23rd 5:00 pm

  This dance takes a penetrating look at mental illness in contemporary society.  Higher Ground the dance explores the struggle to maintain control in the face of madness, and the humanness and vulnerability of a soul coming to grips with their own unraveling. The inspiration for the work comes from the documentary “The Library of Dust” based on photographer David Masiel’s photos of the Oregon State Mental Hospital. Masiel’s photos document the decay of the hospital and the 3500 copper canisters which hold the remains of residents of the mental hospital who were unwanted in life and in death. The dance honors the journey for wholeness, and explores the interior life of our most vulnerable, and the resilience of our human spirit, and the courage to go on in the face of adversity.

Fringe Me Sept 20th – 23rd West Hall

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“Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,
in me are lives I do not know the names of,
nor the fates of,
nor the hungers of or what they eat.
They eat of me.
Of small and blemished apples in low fields of me
whose rocky streams and droughts I do not drink.
And in my streets—the narrow ones,
unlabeled on the self-map—
they follow stairs down music ears can’t follow,
and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,
in hours uncounted by the self-clock,
they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other loves.
There too have been the hard extinctions,
missing birds once feasted on and feasting.
There too must be machines
like loud ideas with tungsten bits that grind the day.
A few escape. A mercy.
They leave behind
small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale lives in.” jane Hirshfield

Higher Ground June 23rd Velocity Dance Center 8pm

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Briana Jones

It takes one of the Suns protons a 100,000 years to travel from the core to the outer edge of the sun where it’s released and 8 minutes later it reaches us in the form of sunlight. The journey takes so long because it keeps bumping into plasma particles along the way. This is so like the journey our collective consciousness is taking. We are working on finding higher ground, and it’ slow go. We keep bumping into dead ends like quest for money, fame, power. When we reach the surface we shall surely fly to our destination where ever that is enjoy the ride.

Training Notes

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Higher Ground

Whenever we begin to evaluate, deciding that we should or should not do this or that, then we have already associated our practice or our knowledge with categories, one pitted against the other, and that is spiritual materialism, the false spirituality of our spiritual advisor. Whenever we have a dualistic notion such as, “I am doing this because I want to achieve a particular state of consciousness, a particular state of being,” then automatically we separate ourselves from the reality of what we are. …when we formulate a second judgement, “I should be doing this and should avoid doing that” then we have achieved a level of complication which takes us a long way from the basic simplicity of what we are. The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego. If anything more than this is laid onto our psychology, then it becomes a very heavy, thick mask, a suit of armor.
It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego’s constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgement, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.
Chogyam Trungpa

30/30 June 22nd & 23rd Velocity 8 pm

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SCARS

They tell how it was, and how time

came along, and how it happened

again and again. They tell

the slant life takes when it turns

and slashes your face as a friend.

Any wound is real.  In church

a woman lets the sun find 

her cheek, and we see the lesson:

there are years in that book: there are sorrows

a choir can’t reach when they sing.

Rows of children lift their faces of promise,

places where the scars will be.

William Stafford