Is That What I Am Holding?
Happy National Poetry Month from Stance on Dance!
BY CATHERINE MARIE DAVALOS; ILLUSTRATION BY CAMILLE TAFT
My back has been watched,
the hipbone hurting for six episodes.
I keep finding places, new palettes of expression to nothing.
I turn, a different person, older, tired.
Is that what I am holding?
Opening and folding in half, I felt the pressure build.
My hamstrings, stretched beyond the normal state of confinement,
were aching the question.
Trying to force my convoluted fear way out of this situation, tears began running history.
Is that what I am holding?
It looked like a totally Hokey Pokey year.
Confined
Restrained
Restricted
That’s what it’s all about, clap, clap.
What the hell am I holding?
Nothing
Air
Space
Jump
A home makes for something.
Catherine Marie Davalos is a Chicana choreographer who makes dances that question heteronormativity using a feminist, Latina and Chicana perspective. Her company, Davalos Dance Company consists of nonconforming bodies, races, and sexual identities. Recently, DDC had the pleasure of performing their site-specific work Oh the MOON! in Panicale, Italy. Davalos is the director of dance at Saint Mary’s College of California.
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.