Duende

Happy National Poetry Month from Stance on Dance!

BY MADISON KREKEL; ILLUSTRATION BY CAMILLE TAFT

Only in service to you

Can I feel the most free

My brain powers down

I do not move from intellect

I can taste everything

But I do not try to define it

My love is boundless

Fear, a distant memory

I’m alert, prowling

Is this what a shaman is?

Sometimes this feeling doesn’t happen

It isn’t an automatic state just in the doing

The trick is to get out of my own way

How?

Everyday provides a different answer

Maybe that’s where the practice comes in

Through the years, slowly picking away at all the things that aren’t in service to me

But then I come back home

Much like a child

And I greet my purest self

Duende

~~

Madison Krekel is a multidisciplinary artist and performer, originally from Oakland, CA. Now living in Brooklyn since 2010, she has performed works by John Bernd with Ishmael Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez, Katy Pyle’s Ballez, Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company, and was a longtime performer with Third Rail Projects’ shows Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise, among others. When not performing, she teaches youth ballet at BAX, and rocks regularly around NYC with her punk band, SNATCH ATTACK.

Camille Taft is a seventeen year-old dancer living in Longmont, CO, who has trained throughout her life in primarily ballet and modern dance. With both her parents as visual artists, she has always appreciated the excitement that comes from a collaboration of mixed media, and was thus overjoyed to have the opportunity to work with Stance on Dance.