Photo: Anne Van Aerschot
Photo: Anne Van Aerschot

Oh and Anne Teresa

Kat J. Sullivan

Your foot is sickled and your shoelaces are hot pink and you are Anne Teresa, and all I can think is: That’s Anne Teresa.

I am so high up and you are so far down and the tiles on the theater walls of FringeArts look like a locker room and you run.

You lie on your side and walk along the sides of his feet as he circles, shadowing him. He leans away pulls you upright as he collapses to the ground suspended by your weight as you crease back and forth. I see a folding fan, Anne Teresa.

The bartender hands me my House White in a plastic cup like she knows I’ll be hunching over the program, elbows knocking my neighbors’ with my drink clamped between my knees.

Your outfit is black and your socks are green and your shoes are blue and pink and his pants are black and his shirt is blue and green and his shoes are pink and don’t think I didn’t notice, Anne Teresa.

Amandine Beyer plays and plays and all the lights are still out and just as I am starting to wonder if the people crossing Race Street know they are a part of Partita 2 too, a sliver of doorlight crescents. Boris Charmatz strides out and then you, Anne Teresa.

You and Boris jog the overlapping circles drawn in chalk on the floor, tracing the logarithmic spirals or orbiting globes.

I see you skim and wink and sink in and cycle and again.

You and he are pavemakers, Anne Teresa, in the way you swoop along the rings and wear the bags under your eyes and the lines you walk midair as he swings you.

The doorlight combs across the wall and slides shut, and, Anne Teresa, I see it coming, I hear it first but the chalk on the floor is starting to smear and we’ve been through this before, we’ve been through this before.

I am running in circles. I will inherit your paths.

The music swells, or maybe it’s you, with your chest rising and you’re pulling your sweater overhead.

Anne Teresa, your commitment to your saunter and to Bach and to staying synchronized and to bowing to Amandine in a lunge and to your impishness and to me and to hoisting Boris over your back while he treads air and to the structure and to your skirt up in pins and to what it is continues to circulate.

Oh and Anne Teresa –

Thank you for running the path.

___

For other points of view of Partita 2, please find Megan Bridge’s review here, and Lynn Brook’s day at the dances here.

Partita 2, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Boris Charmatz, and Amandine Beyer, FringeArts, November 1, 2015.

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Kat J. Sullivan

Kat J. Sullivan is a Philly-based dancer, choreographer, writer, and photographer. She performs with local artists in her own and others’ choreographies, and improvises as a way of research and knowing. She is a former editorial board member, editor, and staff writer with thINKingDANCE. Learn more.

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