Many of the dances I create find their origin in books or music: all four dances in Eclipse of the Soul came into being this way.
The first piece, Crossing, was based on both the music, with it's sharply defined, fluid melody, and the book by Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, with it's visceral writing about the confrontation of emotional integrity with physical reality. Before creating Eclipse, I had attended a throat singing performance at the Tibetan Center for Compassion and Wisdom in Mill Valley; I subsequently worked with Ulzii, a Mongolian throat singer, to create the music and video used in this piece. The three dancers are featured as soloists in their approach to the music and the movement.
The third dance, The Unknown Land, echoes the emotions and struggles depicted in Edward Jones' The Known World, with its multilayered perceptions of slavery, free black people and whites-all of whom are a part of a world that they can only partially control. In The Unknown Land, the movement of three dancers acts as a Greek chorus to comment on the duets and ensembles as the Piano Concerto by Gyorgy Ligeti moves in and out of calm, tumult and whimsy.
The last piece is set to music of Sudanese origin that flows smoothly and radiantly through its transitions. For me, this is the serene resolution of the previous dances. The evenings' four pieces, taken as a whole, encompass the themes of tension, conflict and resolution that occur when one's self-definition and determination clash with the unchangeable course of history, and the varying ways in which people face these events.