Margaret's Ghost

Carolyn Stuart and I performed "Margaret's Ghost" in L.A. and Seattle at the Seattle Festival of Dance Improv  earlier this year. We're still exploring who and what the ghost is.

For Youtube we divided the 15 minute performance into parts 1 & 2. # I is the intro and setup for #2. It's a single camera from way back in the lighting booth, but it captures a bit of the magic when things go well on stage. At the end because of the close up, you can't see that I'm holding Carolyn, apparently by her head, a foot off the ground.

Dance reviewer, Michael van Baker at Seattlest said, "Two outstanding performances left us convinced the fun isn't just for dancers and dance groupies, though. "Margaret's Ghost" by Carolyn Stuart and Patrick Gracewood, is a study in the quicksilver side of contact improvisation-

a duet that abstractly could be viewed as the work of a single organism. But it's also very much modern dance in it's reflections on age and the body and relationship. At one point, Gracewood is cradling Stuart as if she's in a bath, slippery as an infant; she's buttery-jointed, and almost mindless in her emotive presence: playful, fearful, trusting. You love art when it makes you feel as alive as that."