Shed or Gap 3

Locks clatter to the floor
The key, they told her
To finding her power
But she stares back and declares
She was already a warrior
Though they tried convincing her otherwise
Hair had nothing to do with it

Chop, or Gap 2

Shoe to root
She wades through a minefield of stumps
Petrified dreams decompose
Feeding sun starved saplings

The shoots fight
And she nods in approval
Then begins to shake at the sight of the trunks
Concentric hopes unrealized
Handcuffed to the ground

She saws at their chains
Licking deltas of salt from her lip
Cheeks streaked with war paint
As the chains constrict
Suffocating the wood
It screams.
"Go!"

She runs
Dodging debris
Focused, until
The sky hums
Her flight momentarily masked by the soft lullaby
Of wings

He hovers,
The hornet.
Buzzing with electric promise.
Offering her the air
Confident that he can
But she knows.
That the stumps were once trees.

So she runs faster.
Then trips
And lands chin to chest
Shrouded by hair

Peaking through the web,
She faces a kaleidoscope of distorted reflections
Nightmarish iterations of herself
In his compound lenses

He nuzzles against her neck
And promises to be gentle
Body soft
As she reaches to stroke the wing

But when her fingers fan,
The soil groans
Her soles rooting
Clawing at the vacuum that was once air

He drones apologetically,
When he stings her
And lands
Vowing to stay

But her branches weep
Burdened by the constant reminder
That the stumps were once trees
And she can no longer run.

Skim, or Gap 1

I went to a jungle

I went to a jungle with trees, a tree really,

And climbed to the point in the canopy

Where vines grew thick and made way

To the place where I lay and stared at the sky

For hours

Watching the leaves breathe

And inhaling bits of history

Narratives on the air

Alone.

Caught in thoughts on time, in time,

As the sun ticked down

Past the edge of infinity

And the sky hinted at yellow

Amidst the hum of man made things

Where the jungle isn't a jungle

But the tree is still a tree

And the vines are purple nylon

That hold

Hold enough for me not to, in fact be

Alone

But with my conscience

Eyes that complement

Pairs of soil and sky

Matter that isn't mine but may as well be

Company in solitude

Cursive among the branches

Where forward is up and there is no down.

Sex is talk and love is life

We watch the struggle

And wait as our nose grows cold

Ears booming with the silence

Of time continuing to pass

Questions, now internal certainties

That we

I?

Pour into hollow capillaries.

We watch the branches fill

And let them tangle

Satisfied by the knots

For if it were any other way,

They wouldn't be ours

And we would fall

Oblivious

Diffusing the past particles of someone else's future.

On Visibility- A Letter to My Local Cultural Council

Good Morning Mr. Benson,

My name is Jennifer Passios and I am a dancer and arts educator in the Greater Boston Area. Although most of my work takes place in the city, I grew up in Lunenburg and still reside here in town.



Students at the American Dance Festival 2016 engaging with faculty facilitators
in conversations about race and gender disparities

With Arts in Education week upon us beginning September 11, I've been thinking a lot about my role as an artist and how my work relates back to elevating the arts in my own community. Until recently, I was supplementing my dancing with work as a substitute teacher and frequently utilized tools from my performance practice in the classroom. Students, even those who I had previously experienced challenges with, reengaged with the material. They left lessons with a deeper understanding of complex concepts and visibly demonstrated more confidence in their learning.  As an artist, keeping creativity alive on the local level is important to me and that spark begins with the students. I'm curious what the cultural council's role is in keeping the arts alive throughout our community, the schools in particular since they constitute such a large breadth of mental plasticity and imagination.

As you may know, Julie Burrows became the Chief of Arts and Culture for the city of Boston on September 23, 2014. This was an exciting jump for those of us with arts professions because her appointment prompted a series of initiatives that boosted arts funding and more importantly, visibility throughout the city. The landscape is becoming one that is more sustainable for artists and, as a result, is helping to bring the entire city together through dance, visual art, music, poetry, writing, film, spoken word, and conversation. I was on the town of Lunenburg website earlier today and didn't come across a tab for the Cultural Council anywhere on the page. I'm curious as to why. I am not single minded enough to think that the town doesn't have a multitude of committees and initiatives that need to be present and easy to find on the website, but it disheartened me that the Cultural Council isn't represented at all.

The first time I came upon Lunenburg's Cultural Council, I was researching the LCC grant program in conjunction with my own work. However, in reflecting more on arts initiatives, it seems to me that I can contribute more to this community in partnership with the Council rather than as a grant seeker. I was wondering if there were any open seats on the council and if so, if you could provide me with some more information regarding present goals, active projects, and time commitment? It is important to me as a young person to represent my demographic and increase access to career paths that are underfunded and underrepresented, particularly in small town settings.

My goal here is to facilitate dialogue. I am curious about the work of the Cultural Council because its work is important to community growth. Being an artist has given me the opportunity to connect to people of the world, to think quickly, to become a voice for positive social change, to show empathy, to create, to advocate, and to spread awareness.

I look forward to continuing the conversation and hope that there is some way I can contribute to your efforts in town this year.

Cheers,

Jen 

< 501: Verb

I sat beside a hay bale on a farm in Vermont and surveyed an open barn doorway lit by twinkle lights and vibrating with the memory of fiddles. The eves dripped, conjuring thoughts of an evening punctuated by skipping through puddles, whooping with the thunder, and carving paths through the torrents with a blue feather. Across from me as the last of the droplets slid down my eyelashes knelt a fellow weather worshiper. Connected by the rain we talked, simple things mostly-

Where do you live?- A yurt in New York, but I went to school in Boston



Moonshine Music Festival (c) TW Collins

What for?- Electrical Engineering

And the ever difficult,

Why did you choose that?

 “I’ve always been fascinated by making something out of nothing”

Simple, but stupefying.

The poetics left me reeling.

Today it is raining again and as I reflect back on this encounter I have realized a truth about why I have chosen to be an artist.

Hold on to your hats- None of that “It makes me feel free”, “I can let out my emotions”, “I can say the things that words cannot”, Hallmark business.

I dance for the same reason that humans are enthralled by newborn babies.  

Confused?

Understandable.

Let me return to farms. I recently watched FarmHer, a PBS documentary profiling women in agriculture. About halfway through the program, the videographer zooms in on a small tray of verdant potted seedlings as a dirt encrusted hand motions gently, reminiscing on farming and miracles. Ten days prior, these tiny plants were encased in a protective coating underground. Cells negotiated and differentiated. Roots spread out. The reaching fingers soaked up water and made a deal with new shoots- I’ll hydrate you if you nourish me. Gametes battled their way towards the light. Shoots wriggled past soil, fertilizer, perhaps an insect or two, and the lucky ones pumped their fists triumphantly through the Earth. Viola. Plant babies.

We are floored by birth, but it’s not the baby itself that is miraculous. The tiny warm thing squirming around becomes a source of wonder because of the processes that brought it there- conception, pregnancy, growth, cell division, development, turning a thought into a creature. Looking at that baby, we don’t see an object, we see all of the actions that brought the baby here. The miracle is that those actions ultimately manifested as a person that will continue navigating the world through yet more actions.

The baby in a parent’s arms, or pushing up though the soil, or stumbling around on 4 legs is the physical manifestation of millions of processes. It is evidence of verbs.

Life as an artist is about being aware of those processes. It’s difficult to understand because the rewards aren’t often tangible. In being this way though, art is miraculous. As a performer, I get to be that newborn, the result of thought made manifest and brought to fruition, of making something out of nothing.

I dance because I am a verb.

(494)

< 501: People

At the age of 3, I was chastised in the produce aisle of my local Shop n’ Save for inviting an old man home to dinner. My disconcerted mother reminded me that I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers. Proudly, I gazed up at her and exclaimed, “I told him my name is Jennifer, so he isn’t a stranger anymore!”

 

Thus began my habit of social networking.

 

Bates Dance Festival 2014- Photo Credit: Arthur Fink

Successful relationship building has been a determining factor in the viability of nearly all of my endeavors, artistic or otherwise.  As I have worked to become a dancer, mentors have encouraged me to build connections with the people I encounter in class, at shows, during auditions, and in other arts saturated settings. I listened, did, and have passed on the suggestions to younger dancers, frequently accompanied by modified renditions of the “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” sentiment.

 

Recently, I have found myself attempting to restructure my interpretation of this phrase.  

 

I've become consumed by the question- How do we choose who to know?

 

I'm not here to diminish the importance of forging connections rooted in artistic commonality. It’s logical to seek out companions in our field. However, in confining our interactions to environments where we are surrounded only by other artists of the same discipline, we lose out on speaking with the folks who have the greatest potential direct us in spreading our artistic influence effectively.

 

How, then, do we strike up a conversation when place doesn’t immediately dictate artistic inclination? I’ve found fearlessness with a healthy dose of empathy typically works. Smiling helps. And yes, my favorite place to meet people is still the grocery store.

 

Whole Foods is my current location of choice since it contains an invaluable relationship building tool- tables. There are never enough to meet the demand of customers hoping to find one unoccupied. I’m thrilled when people choose to sit near me. Fortunately, it happens often. Sitting that close to someone and refraining from at least an introduction makes me uncomfortable. It seems that the people who choose to share tables with me feel similarly.

So we talk.

I have made the acquaintance of a gentleman who works at a homeless shelter and details high end rugs, a 70something local sculptor who also dances, describing Argentine Tango as a way of life, a freelance makeup artist, and a nanny newly in breast cancer remission. I left each interaction with a story and often a business card. These people all enriched my experience as an artist but I wouldn't have met any of them had I chosen to network only at dance related events.

Artists are facilitators, but we are not the only people who make art happen. Yes, we input creative impulses and metamorphose them into visual, tangible, or otherwise sensory products. We indulge in the responsibility of experience translation.

 

But.

 

To reimagine human life, you must collect experiences.

To collect those experiences, you must be human.

Humans make art happen.

(498)

 

< 501: Class

Friday, 7AM.

 My ponytailed head, complete with unbecoming, razor straight, center part, bobs along the perimeter of a sea of blankets. The quilt undulates softly in time with spurts of apnea induced snoring. I weigh my options, decide to go with a poke and softly spoken words. A pillow to the face sounds more interesting, but I opt out.

(Un)fortunately, the poke is enough and my dad wakes up with a start. Bleary eyed, he looks at me, confused.

Holding up my backpack, I eagerly proclaim,

“I’m ready. I want to go to school.”

The night before, my father was inducted into the hall of paternal sainthood- he took me to an Avril Lavigne concert. It was awesome. At 12, belting those lyrics about how Sk8r Bois made life so Complicated was nothing short of cathartic.

My parents had agreed that the late night coupled with my attendance record merited a day off from school.

But I had a test.

There were things to learn.

I was not willing to skip.

Since childhood, I have been encouraged to approach mental cultivation within framework of investigation and enthusiasm. Both my educational pursuits and current professional development (class, writing, observing) have been founded in enriching discovery rather than blasé necessity or cerebral anguish.

In general, I find myself in the midst of a people who indulge in the idea of toil. We are not considered fully invested in our practice unless we are, as the adage goes, bleeding, sweating or crying. Sure, if we dance enough, all of these things will happen, but they will be products of inevitability, not effort. If bodily secretions were actually a measure of professional worth, we would all be better off spending our days in fist fights or donating platelets.

In my community, geographically speaking, the religiously committed class takers seem to be those whose professional inclinations do not fall within the dance sector. Having assigned the ^struggle=^value equation elsewhere, their experience appears less infected by an almost primal need to, as Kendra Portier so aptly puts it, A+ everything in the studio.

How then, can we throw out the concept of chore and reimagine daily practice as a privilege?

I’ve tried to habituate classes into my weekly rotation that meet a series of process bench marks rather than self-assigned (and frankly self-sabotaging) performance goals.

These include:

An uplifting class- for pure physical exaltation

A challenging class- to work on focus and endurance

An easy class- to find nuance

A systematic class- to track progress

A class with friends- for support and accountability

For now, this method suits me.

I view this practice laboratory with reverence. That space loses its luster when suffering overcomes growth. Tenacity is only effective when partnered with purpose, joy and forgiveness.

In accordance, let’s develop a practice that is puzzling rather than painful and commit to working smarter, not harder.

(479)

< 501: Instigation

In 500 words or less, please tell us your reasons for applying, your entire relevant professional history, an idealized vision of your next five years of life, why you think your goals will morph into reality, your favorite color, and your feelings about global warming.

Welcome to the application marathon.

It's my third year out of undergrad and I've started navigating the world both as an independent artist and a graduate degree program hopeful. As you can imagine, this involves spending countless hours drinking too much coffee and selling myself through language to a panel of invisible people tasked with deciding whether or not they wish to meet/partner with/fund me based on my ability to woo them via writing sample. 

Invariably, each application has required a personal statement. Every personal statement has posed at least 4 black hole-esque questions (see above). And, to my simultaneous excitement and dismay, all have included the caveat "in 500 words or less".

The first time I ran into this puzzle, I found myself wavering between an incapacitating verbal inertia and an eruption of words so violent the fallout threatened to bury anything of value beneath a thick layer of idea debris.  

If you're the artsy type, and perhaps even if you aren't, my guess is that you can relate to functioning in an environment where excess of some sort truncates beauty, meaning, and or interest. I encounter the affliction regularly in forms ranging from stage performance to literary analysis to conversational oversharing.

In grappling with this conundrum, I've refrained from posting for a while, wanting to write about a something, but determined not to waste precious words preaching about an anything.

What is pertinent to my artistic practice?

How do these things relate to my community (designation and definition up for debate)?

And how can I forge this discussion without wandering off on tangents or getting caught up in the network of thoughts occupying my headspace?

Thus, I’m challenging myself to apply the 500 word restriction to my writing. In each post under the <501 umbrella, I will delineate my preliminary thoughts on a topic of personal creative interest within aforementioned word limit.

Yes, this process is highly self-serving. If you are unequipped to handle copious ‘I statements’, run now. However, if anecdotes, odd metaphors, and probing questions are your thing, you have come to the right place.

Hopefully, some posts will require further research and fleshing out. Ideally one or two will inspire you to serve up popcorn or brownies and initiate an impassioned debate amongst friends. Should you choose to engage in this sort of verbal volley, please share it with me.

Ultimately, my goal is to utilize these linguistic sketches as points of departure for further conversation. For me, this means within the field of contemporary dance, but I don’t wish to impose limits here-

Aside from word count.

(478)