close up

The trees have stepped back. Her face is rehearsing
its solo. Show me how you look at your own death,
the choreographer has asked and she’s meeting its new limbs,
marveling at its toes. She drops her bag of chard, her bag
of avocados and turns to confront the four lanes of traffic
she’s crossed. The car that just missed her has continued
driving into an evening that will present itself with the sudden
angles of right and wrong and our driver will choose one
or the other while bending into his refrigerator
or, later, when her eyes are owls perched on the fence
between his sleep and the timid mice of his dreams.
Concentrate, the choreographer says and she is
on the sidewalk summoning the greetings
she’s heard in her life, the unexpected pleasure
she’s encountered, entering a room before she was
expected. Behind her, the trees, in formation, are looking at
the audience with a direct gaze meant to unnerve us a little,
startle the conclusions we’ve come to.

routine

The women walking home from work
are told they’ll have to wash the dreams
from their duvets before they make supper.
What dreams, they ask, but the choreographer
waves her hand. The dreams aren’t important, she says.
Show me the fields you dream in. And their duvets
are lowered like clouds onto the path they’ve been using
as a hymnal. This is surreal, one of them says.
Another is climbing the intimacy of duvet like a mountain.
They hem their misgivings and start dabbing
at the dirt, one of them schedules her scarf
and uses that. They’ve dropped their childhoods,
their phones, their partners. A puddle is discovered
on the north side of the park and they cram around it,
vying to get at the water before it’s used up.
The audience does nothing to help. We watch
the women bend and expose a fatigue that is cotton
and private. Their dreams are relentless.

adjust

The woman picks up her chard, still in shock,
while the trees bare the boards of their failed lives
to the audience. When she turns her back to us,
we are left at the tender edge, leaning in to
what will happen next. The choreographer whispers
the next scene and the woman responds by dropping
her bags again. We can’t see her face. When she walks
amongst the women scrubbing their dreams,
they stop. One of them rises to greet her. Another
adjusts her mouth. More women gather, settling
her hair, straightening her story. The woman can’t keep
hold of anything, her hands unclaspable.
Though the trees offer enough shade, the women use
a broad spectrum of excuses to offset aging.
The choreographer has asked them to seduce
their mirrors but they are too busy. The woman has dropped
her avocados and her chard is so wilted it will need to be
startled or, at the very least, steamed.

reunion

The late hour has raked the park of women
so the choreographer lights herself a tree and, drawing deeply,
pulls its leaves into her lungs. She can’t help but exhale
more dance, pollinate all this green with a progress
of bodies. She watches a couple talking. The woman
reaching to touch the man’s shirt, its bold stripes, the internal
combustion beneath are fascinating. The air syrups
around them and a woman walking by is caught
in their trade wind. Even their breathing
is tropical. The choreographer forgets her tree.
Wade through their honey again, she says
and the woman obliges, baptizing herself in their sap.
When she emerges, her arms move into the fourth year
of the cycle of her desire. The choreographer introduces
the woman to her shadow. Coax that part of yourself
into the move, she tells her. And the woman has no choice
but to sit down in the grass. Have I told you how alone
I’ve been? she asks. Shh, the choreographer says. Show me.

flash

The fourth year of a cycle means leaves
have been eaten. The arborists claim it’s more
a cosmetic nuisance than anything for the city.
The women who have turned up for the audition
are attempting to move their bodies in reaction
to the cosmetic nuisance aging is. They pull
at their sags, exaggerate the ripeness of their
fruit. The choreographer has arranged the stage
with trees. In this seclusion, the women weep.
Many, on their application forms, mentioned a shortage
of men in Halifax and she has asked them to create
a sequence of movement to represent this shortage.
They have chosen either pilates or yoga because movement
has lost its imagination and can no longer eclose
from its nympha state into wings or moult into any emotional
instar. Long ago, these women could lure the ocean
to shore, their legs seemingly fused, their breasts
bare. They were reckless then and totally unrehearsed.