Dancing in the Snow, in the Sky, in the Streets, in Gold

The notice was just a small square in the Village Voice, and would have been easy to miss without the line drawing of an airplane. “Audition for Tim Miller’s next piece,” it said. “You must be willing to jump out of an airplane.”

I idolized Tim Miller. But it was the possibility of leaping into space that ensured I would go. What did he mean, exactly, jump out of an airplane? Would there be a parachute?

Slam. Splat. Boom. Dancing downtown in the early 80’s was thuddingly, grottily real. Dancing is physical, duh. But we took physicality to a new level, hurling ourselves against walls and sidewalks, diving into floors, ricocheting off each other’s bodies. Loving the slam and thump and the vertiginous maybe of falling. Crashing up against expectations. Up against the world, as if we could break it apart and fly through the gap in reality we’d created. Because whoooooeeeee, now that would be fun.

This wasn’t what I’d trained for in the modern dance program at Sarah Lawrence. But during my last year in college, I went to see the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Metropolitan Opera House. I’d been studying Graham’s technique and importance to dance since I was 12, and had scraped up ticket money and train fare to the city to see the concert by myself, hugely excited to finally see the godmother of from-the-gut artistry. In my program was a…