The Influence of Sign Language on Aerial Dance
I just performed a new solo last week for an arts association fundraiser, hosted by my husband, Don Carson and me, at The Marsh Studio.
Having focussed on my spoken word/aerial dance solo for “HerSelf Rising”(the performance with “Girls on Trapeze”) I brushed off the auras of my grandmother and great-grandmother and entered the fresh, unexplored terrain of “what now”?
Recently a student, Julie, introduced me to “signing”. She works with teaching pre-schoolers sign language so I asked Julie to show me the gestural phrase for the words “only love endures”. It was lovely. I began going through the sequence my solo, integrating that gestrual signage at points throughout the piece.
Perhaps because I have seen aerial dance and circus performances for so many years I am acutely sensitive to every nano-second of nuance, intention, head and hand gestures, ways to engaging and disengaging with the apparatus, phrasing, transitions and stillness.
As I went through my rehearsals with my iPad camera as my ally, I watched for evidence where there was a disconnect between me and the rope, the bar, myself, the imagined audience.