The Rock waltz étude provides excerpts from a much larger anthology called Seaside Words for the Disappearing Girl, which explores performances in nature during the final three years of my mother’s life while acting as one of her caregivers. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we lived in isolation in an effort to protect my mother’s immune system. Performing with her, for her in our most cherished outdoor spaces— in her garden, by the river, on the rocks—I questioned what it is to perform in deepened connection with absences and presences.
Dr. Christine Mazumdar
The Rock waltz étude (from Seaside Words for the Disappearing Girl)
Un deux trois
La valse. On the rocks.
On the shorelines. Le lit. Water touchant mes feet.
Les chuchotements in my ears. Le bassin collecting tears.
Le rythme des vagues is our pulse.
The métronome to the valse.
Nos mouvements si lents. Contre les vagues violentes.
The music swells.
La rivière devient wishing well.
Souvent. Sous le vent.
Ensemble pour un moment.
Comme tu me manques
Un deux three
The weight of my body eroding your shape.
Les contours de ton corps continue to break.
Grooves and crevasses. Mes doigts trace.
Sautillons over the swells. Skin to skin. Face à face.
Pieds nus. La chaleur contre le froid.
Le terre et petits morceaux de verres.
Cicatrices par les pierres.
Je te vois dans les moments calmes.
Under water. I see your face.
After the waves are gone.
Comme tu me manques
One two trois.
La craie. CaCO3.
Etchings of our danse.
We become chalk.
Washed away by the wake.
Effaced impermanence. Laver the slate.
Palimpseste.
We are disappearing together.
Appearing ensemble.
L’archive of touch.
Together seules. Avec each other.
The artifact of our time.
Dérivèrent.
La danse of encounter.
Forever altering. The shape of nous.
Les mémoires d’une rencontre.
La notation de notre danse.
I feel you touching me.
After the waves are gone.
Trois deux un
Comme tu me manques
