Tuesday evening, January 27th, 2025 – in the Studio at 115 Wooster Street – I was invited by Samantha Geracht to sit quietly (as always) and lend “another pair of eyes” to a rehearsal for Charles Weidman’s seven-minute epic, the 1936 Lynchtown to be presented on February 15 and 16 by the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble at the Paul Taylor Dance Company Studios.

And, again, as always after dance, I could not sleep that night, synaptic connections overloaded with a palimpsest of vintage, modern, and immediate impressions in the predawn hours. I recalled the Humphrey-Weidman investment in the sternum, the uplift and relaxation, as if being wound skyward by an invisible filament in the center of your chest while the extremities linger…the halting entrance-walks with toes dragging, animalistic stomping and the ensemble pointing into a distance the dancers can envision but we, hapless bystanders, cannot…odd partnerings going against the grain of the group…the disjunctive construction of the piece, its abrupt variations, extraction of flow, and counterintuitive twirls making me feel as if I were in the stretched-out middle of a timeless time..,

and transfixed by Margaret’s reckless but knowingly disciplined, perilous but trusting, cautious but ebullient build-up…before her earthbound descent…

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