The Time of My Life

2007

This was my first live performance. It was created for the premiere screening of my film All My Life and continued its themes. I delivered a monologue written by Rachel Rosenthal and then invited my dance partner onto the floor to do the choreography at the finale of Dirty Dancing.

The monologue, which has a darkness that contrasts with the sentiment of both my film and the celebratory feeling of the event, was as wrote:

Do others go through their lives feeling like a stand-in who hasn’t read the script? And why? If sustaining a life that was not my own was sapping me, why did I systematically continue the life supports, like those hospitals who keep vegetable people alive with multimillion dollar machines and equipment and much energy? Where did I get the notion that being me was so horrible? That preventing that from happening was worth all my discomfort and ingenuity? And when did those abortions and miscarriages begin? Those self-inflicted knitting needles and coat hangers to arrest at all costs the growth of the foetus, that homunculus that wanted to be yet was considered too scandalous to see the light. Too scandalous for who? Who considered? The process must have started early because by the age of three I was already suffering from insomnia and nervous ticks, by six I was a nervous wreck and by nine I was no longer me and I had already perfected the technique of artful recreation.

I followed this with: “But tonight I’m going to my kind of dancing with a great partner…”

photo: Roberto Quagliata
photo: Roberto Quagliata
photos: Roberto Quagliata
photos: Roberto Quagliata