Dress A Day, Day 25: Secret Journey

Sunday, May 30

It's not a mistake, or yes it is, but I'm aware the video is only two seconds long: maybe this was one dance or one day that wasn't meant to be recorded... I'm at the Dance Africa Festival at BAM. Diana is filming, or at least we are under the impression that she is, but the camera chose not to record this particular moment for some reason. This dance came at the end of a long day of roaming and bodywork giving and bead buying. Exhausted, I walked my bike and Diana away from the drum circle and toward the subway stop on Fulton St. On the way, we chanced upon the most sublime of all sights: three master Kora players, joined by my friend Kevin the Mbira player and a flute player, in a parking lot around the corner from the main strip. Now no amount of exhaustion could stop me from appreciating this sight and these sounds, so I took off my sandals and danced barefoot on the warm asphalt. I danced and danced and the more I danced the more the musicians played. People stopped to watch and listen and I danced on as if this was the most natural thing for me to do. At some point I realized that Diana was long gone and the sun was on its way too so I made mine: it was with heavy legs and a light heart that I biked home. The next morning I knew something in my dancing had changed, opened up, transformed, taken flight. Maybe that's why it was out of reach of the camera...

The dress is one I bought in Israel a few years ago with the familiar intention of purchasing something that has no practical value (too short, too tight, too wacky) and which I then proceeded to wear in the coming summers as if it were the little black dress that goes with everything. Funny how that happens.

Dress A Day, Day 24: Come Closer

Saturday, May 29

At the Brooklyn Marriott, late at night, having put my mother and my aunt to bed. I am in one of my favorite dresses: it reminds me of military wear but the cut is so hip and sexy that it camouflages the combat written into it's essence. This night was a night for being hip and sexy and camouflaged: enough said. As close as I may have been, to those who saw me I was far away... and then there were the moments in which I came closer to have a good look.

The dress is one I bought in Belgium, during my residency at the Nadine arts center in 2004. I had been roaming a three square block radius of Brussels for the three weeks of the residency, purchasing little more than groceries and chocolate, so when it was over and I found myself a few blocks further into downtown, I thought it appropriate to buy this dress, which called to me from across the street.

Dress A Day, Day 23: Red Rising

Friday, May 28

There is anger and frustration in the story of the acquisition of this dress. It was bought for me by my mother on one of her visits to New York, early in my stay here. It was a rainy day and I was not particularly happy to find myself in a department store on the Upper East Side. She bought herself a skirt of the same style and color, which eventually ended up in my closet too. I never wore the dress until about a year ago. Even now I wear it rarely, but I don't throw it away. Maybe it reveals a side of me I don't like to see, but with which I must stay in dialogue.

Dress A Day, Day 22: Shake Off the Office

Thursday, May 27

That's my office you see there, and that's me, in a little blue dress, playing grown up late at night (otherwise known as trying to keep up with all the maddening office work required of an independent business woman and artist). Grown ups are overworked, they spend too much time in their heads, on their butts, in front of computers. They need to shake it off. This dress makes me feel young enough to do just that: get up and shake and roll and slam the computer shut. I bought it in London, picked it out of a pile of second hand clothes at the Curry Lane market. It's the only dress I bought in London, where I was far more of a serious grown up than I am these days and free days for roaming and buying pretty things were so very rare.

Dress A Day, Day 21: Peel and Serve

Wednesday, May 26

Sometimes a girl just needs to dance. And dance, and dance again. I did four takes of this dress dance, determined to peel off the layers that were covering the essence of this woman in this dress. Earlier in the day, I flew through Brooklyn on my bike in it, the wind peeling the dress from my thighs and revealing bare skin to the world. I was not shy or flattered or upset by the stares and shouts, maybe I was baring my legs to the world in place of a public speech to proclaim my growing strength. But nightfall in the studio revealed my vulnerability, and a sense of doubt and dissatisfaction played itself out as I kept going back to record another round of dance (see two more takes on my youtube channel).

Don't remember exactly where I got this one: was it Israel or San Francisco? Wore it rarely, but always with Pina Bausch's Nelken on my mind. Rediscovered it in Israel just this past January, in a bag that had traveled from Tel Aviv to Haifa to Sderot to Tel Aviv again over the course of six years while it waited to reunite with me. I fell in love with it again, or maybe for the first time, and so I have my aunts to thank for safekeeping it all these years.

Dress A Day, Day 20: Guide

Tuesday, May 25

Epic journeys always involve elf-like creatures that guide the protagonist from one world to the next, don't they?

A Himalayan sweater dress purchased at the Yafo flea market in Israel to be worn in the Catskills, where I lived and worked at the time with an experimental theater company. Elves seem rather bland compared to some of the characters I encountered up there.

Dress A Day, Day 19: Graduation Ceremony

Monday, May 24

At the jam, in a quiet back room with a big sign on the door: Theater Department. Today is my anniversary: it was this Monday in May last year that I packed my things and moved into my new life. But more than an anniversary, a graduation! I am bigger now, I feel it today, more ready to play than ever.

The dress is from Berkeley, a second hand purchase from Telegraph Ave. bought in my freshman year when I was meticulous about wearing at least a little bit of orange every day. It's hand made and was once a lot longer, I imagine, but not in my time. The fabric is a horrible polyester which is fine for Berkeley where the days are mostly pleasant, but not for the sweat pit that is Tel Aviv. I wore it so much in college that I couldn't part with it when I moved to Israel, so it sat in storage for almost four years until my mother announced that it was her turn to move to Israel and I, recently arrived to New York, trekked to California to sort through the few boxes I left behind. While away, my Brooklyn apartment was broken into for the second time in the two short months I had lived there and maybe that's a different story except that it's part of what I've graduated from: that time in my life in which my private space was broken into and burglarized repeatedly. Amen.