Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how different art mediums can interact with and inform one another.
A few months ago, I participated in “COLLISION: When Visions Combine,” an annual collaboration between The Momentary, our local modern arts museum housed in a decommissioned 63,000-square-foot cheese factory, and CACHE, a local arts organization. The two combined their wildly prescient forces to pair artists of different mediums together for two fifteen-minute performances across the Momentary.
Before revealing our partners, they had us confirm we were willing to participate. I said yes, thrilled by the possibility. I hoped they’d pair me with one of the many incredible musicians I’d met in the past year through events sponsored by Artists 360. I looked forward to discovering how to combine original music and poetry.
But they hadn’t paired me with a musician.
They’d paired me with Bekah Skaggs, an immensely talented professional dancer. I had no idea how we’d make it work because— as someone who is very much known for being the opposite of graceful— I’d never collaborated with a dancer before. But I had already agreed to the challenge, so I met Bekah with an open mind and shared with her my work and experience.
During our initial conversations, Bekah mentioned she had recently danced with fire as part of a performance. She couldn’t see, because it was over the phone, but my eyes lit up immediately. I had just completed a novel-in-verse that prominently features water, so I asked Bekah if she had ever danced with water. She hadn’t— but when I told her about my project, she jumped at the challenge.
I pieced together a portion of my novel more explicitly dealing with water— including, literally, an entire contrapuntal from a violent lake’s point of view— and she designed a makeshift water stage.
We both learned a lot from the collaborative process. I learned how to factor movement and breath into my writing (when Bekah asked for more time to move from the wet tarp floor to the lollipop pole) and she learned how to choreograph spoken word poetry. The resulting performance was unbelievably incredible, transportive and amazing— and beyond anything the two of us could have imagined. Everything from the space (which provided an endless, resonant echo), to the music (“Apex Instrumental,” a track by Modeling, which just so happens to be a band comprised of Bekah’s cousins); and the very fact that we had been paired felt transcendent. And dare I say, magical.
I won’t be able to share the full video of our performance today, even though it was professionally recorded, because it does include some especially shocking spoilers in the novel, which is currently on submission to editors. But I hope that I’ll have the chance to share it someday in a distant future.
For now, enjoy these incredible photos that offer just a glimpse of the incredibly transportive experience. And catch a glimpse of the performance in this sped-up clip.
Photos and video provided courtesy of Jared Sorrells, Novo Studio.
Hiba Tahir 