Choreography by Deborah Hay
Written adaptation by Emma Fitzgerald

She takes a rippling trip over the floorboards and circumnavigates the space without motion. There is an arch in her mouth and a tongue over its bridge. Without violence or distemper she comes to rest at a point on mid-stage left.
She articulates a passage one and a half times the length of her body. She billows, expands, pivots and segues in sequence as she unfurls her progress along this relentless line. Instantly she is found on another path, having left the previous step her mouth opens and we don’t quite catch the flavour of music inhabiting her limbs. I think of faded roses and dusty wine bottles. Her breath carries fragments of tender song to my ears as her body writhes and pounces. She is nearing me but not facing me directly and when I realise how close she is I see her unfold three heron steps. Her perch isn’t distant as much as the settled sound she brings from behind her eyes.

In a short green grass the children push toys. Blocks of colour, red squares and white triangles on string. Inch high this grass, if it wasn’t so wiry new you’d think it had been burnt. I don’t want to hurt anyone. but my body has leaked.

Propose the second summer to the same lamb. Spot no valid difference. Here a little lower for a little longer. Clocks lengthen in the dry corners and we suffer a deeply personal yet unique silence. My mouth proposes countless binges. Tablets of sound twin themselves in the throat until the sound between “t” and “s” lengthens itself like a shadow in the heap.

Bone shattered and alone she tells us it has taken all her resolve not to trade the place she inhabits for an action which will erase her presence. This is tiring to watch – a constant highly choreographed action. Repeatedly her positions tell us that she understands herself obliged to be seen by others yet has herself no innate ability to compose what will be read of her by those same others. I’m irritated by this, I turn away.

Return of vision I find myself reflecting on how the same chemistry governs the blood and belly of those in seats like mine. Sharing mood, consistency and traits of odour we rule over small portions of consequence. Variations in local temperature produce energetic inconsistency between fleshes.

She and I repeat one mistake until we have covered three quarters of the same circle.

I stop believing, I drop out, careful not to leave a stain.

She turns and attempts to become a kind of mirror to herself but time won’t allow it. Heart not stopping, heart not stopped in spite of panic at being abandoned. Her voice decays before relaying the message – repeats, repeats without ever improving. Eventually I get a definite sense that someone else is warping the distance between us but I don’t trust my judgement and am still silent. She says “butterfly” and it breaks into “horse”.

She escapes side-stepping – each step frees her name from the tip of her tongue. I look in a direction guided by points that were fixed before I could fix my own points. Her speed is not limited to her hands. Plagued by uselessness, consumed by uselessness she splits some of the certainty off and pours it out again in a walk that I disdainfully criticise as being indulgently dark. All apologies I watch. She is red, coloured in wilful relapse. I talk to myself instead of praying. Our shared seriousness makes us seem sisters. She walks off.