So yesterday's dance show was absolutely amazing. It was the choreography of Georges Momboyes. He was born on the Ivory Coast, which is a culturally-rich dance area of West Africa. It was one of the most amazing live performances I've ever seen. There were only six dancers and two drummers, and they performed a piece called Clair de Lune for a little over an hour, and it was sooo worth it. It was the story of Africans who live in the forest without electricity and only have the light of the moon to light their nights. So the piece generally had very little light on the stage, and it started with the dancers carrying lanterns. And they danced with these lanterns, which turned out to be really great props. There was also a bit in the middle where they played with shadows. One person stood all the way upstage and one person stood all the way downstage, and then their shadows were different sizes. So the bigger shadow could knock the small shadow around, and so there was a significant deal of humor in it. The dancers also had clear personalities, which made it more like these people were actually members of a village, instead of a corps of dancers on a stage. The music was constantly changing from calm to ridiculously fast, high-energy music. It was mostly just drums, but you could tell that it wasn't quite authentic West African music, because the meter was in the typical Western music 8-bar. However, the dancers were incredible. They were so freaking muscular, and this piece is unforgiving. You must have the stamina and speed to run a marathon in an hour in order to do this type of dancing. I like to describe this choreography as a combination of my three favorite choreographers. It had the raw African spiritualism and live musicians of Katherine Dunham, the innovative and storytelling qualities of Alvin Ailey, and the experimentation and playfulness of Bill T. Jones. Katherine Dunham was one of the first choreographers to bring the idea of possession into play in her choreography. I felt like there were hints of that in this work, but a lot of the dancing was also experimental in that it was surely a combination of African dance, classical dance, hip-hop, jazz, and contemporary modern. It was really fabulous. I'm not sure how else I can put it in words. I'm so happy I went.

Anyway, I'm posting this blog at an awkward time, not because I stayed out all night to watch the Super Bowl, but because when you're sick, you sleep at odd times. I decided that getting better was more important than watching football. And I would have been disappointed anyway, or so I hear. Hence, I return to bed.

Kelly.