Guidebooks for Being Here Now
Watching Night Falling
Should we talk about the weather?
Should we talk about the government?
–R.E.M., “Pop Song 89
I have a favorite website: timeanddate.com. If you ever watch a sunset with me, I apologize in advance for the inevitable nerd-out. There’s a good chance I’m tracking the sun’s disappearance down to the minute as we sit there, and you’ll probably hear way more than you want about the phases of twilight (civil, nautical, astronomical) and what differentiates them. I’ll likely quote the forecast at you too, often with something about the current moonphase.
For me, astronomical knowledge isn’t particularly interesting in itself, I prefer more tangible, reachable things. In fact, I think the website is dead boring – until I’m actually sitting watching sunset. Then it becomes a fascinating guidebook to contextualize my experiential arc through sunset and twilight, a reference point for my exact position in time and space, my relationship to these vast, perpetually shifting astronomical entities… This is Expeditioning 101: KNOW YOUR WHEN AND WHERE. When and where your light will fail, snow will fall, animals will migrate, plants will bloom. For me, this conjures a thrilling symbiosis of survival skills and artistic practice.
It’s also a potent reflection on the powers of observation and calculation. Thousands of years ago people committed their lives to gathering and passing on this knowledge, aware how crucial it was to their thriving. Watching sunset connects us to the Aztecs and ancient Greeks, to Chinese and Aboriginal philosopher-mathematicians, to far-flung friends and family, to the ecology of the place where we sit… a simple sublimity, becoming so present that our presence expands/dissolves into larger flows of space and time.
Hello, I saw you, I know you, I knew you
I think I can remember your name
Hello, I’m sorry, I lost myself,
I think I thought you were someone else…
Carro in After the Flood; photo by Edicha Patcha
Recently I’ve been spending time on the East Trail at South Platte Park, listening to the site where our next project, Red Willow, will grow – feeling its embrace and release of light/heat/life, meeting its community of humans and more-than-humans (solo hikers, therapy duos, Mule Deer foraging, two Bald Eagles frolicking, a Great Horned Owl watching me and commenting on the proceedings). I made friends with specific bends in the river, copses of cottonwood, and a mound left by the 1965 flood. I speculated on how much electric light and human presence a mid-construction new subdivision would add by the time we’re ready to share Red Willow with you and your friends next spring.
Next week I’ll be doing the same thing with Red Willow’s creative team: listening and connecting with a group of people, some of them longtime collaborators and friends, others new to our space and process, all of us looking for affinities across this relational landscape, gradually coalescing from individuals into a larger artistic organism/ecosystem.
I sometimes feel out of my depth relating to people in this way. Not to get stuck in this false binary, but I find Nature much clearer than Culture, with all of its complex social expectations and confounding norms of behavior. It doesn’t help that our creative process varies substantially from project to project, and rarely reflects standard practices of most dance and theatre companies. We need exceedingly clear and sometimes arduous communication to induct each new expedition team into the journey in front of us, so that once we set out, we’re all able to navigate smoothly together.
Our route doesn’t follow a script or libretto or established scenography. We have a working concept defined by specific inquiries to explore and conundra to unpack. We have a working group, assembled based on applicable skills and ineffable affinities. We have a host of first image/action ideas, some that may contain full scenes or core design elements, others that will fall by the wayside on the journey. We usually have a site and other structural elements that give us a sense of the scope of the process and the ‘product’ (shareable experience) we are imagining.
Then we set out, and navigate the expedition together, and things become much easier, clearer, more connective. I prefer being shoulder to shoulder with folks, working or walking or doing something together. We get to know each other within that context, build rhythms of relating, reflecting, collaborating in service of the shared activity, whether it’s work or play. We show ourselves to each other through our contributions to the communal space, and see each other in our actions, not just our words.
So next week, as soon as we’ve done the bureaucratic basics of schedules, contracts, and other formalities, our Red Willow expedition team will immediately set out into a site listening session, to touch the ground and listen to her birds and watch her weather roll through and begin building interconnections of all sorts.
‘Cause we can talk about the weather all we want, but getting out in it… that’s where (and when) it’s at.
And that’s our commitment to you: We offer you caringly crafted journeys, intrinsically connected to place and time and your exquisitely embodied presence, experiences that you can only have by getting out in it with us. Support our 2026 programming here and now.
