Biiiiicyle! Biiiiiicycle! Biiiiicycle!

This week I am not performing with Mad King Thomas for the First. Time. Ever. (Sort of.) Tonight, I’ll be in the house watching the incredible Joanna Furnans do my part, because I’m still healing (but! My scab fell off last night. Progress!)

The first time we performed Fish on Bikes: A Picture of Free, Untrammelled Womanhood, we were right after a dance by Ikwewag Waci/Terri Yellowhammer. It was our biggest show yet, a full house at the Walker Art Center, and I’m wearing an American flag string bikini and a bicycle helmet. Before or after the Ikwewag Waci/Terri Yellowhammer piece, there was an announcement that their dance was a type of blessing, and if I recall it, a prayer for healing.

Um. Yeah, did I mention the bikinis? It felt a long way from healing and making the world better, and I felt a little bad about that, but as I sat in the dark waiting for our cue, I did what I often do in those dark, quiet moments before performing. I tried to think of why I was doing this, and really, healing seemed like a pretty good answer (even though it sets off all kind of cynical post-modern atheist alarm bells).  Maybe it’s a little about healing our sad and angry thoughts about our bodies. Letting all my jiggliness and all my love ricochet right on out of me and directly into all 700 people we performed for that night. My body works! It’s wonderful! It bicycles! It dances! Fuck yeah!

Now Fish on Bikes is always that kind of dance for me. A big party, a celebration, a dose of medicine that tastes so, so good, like blueberries. 

Come see us! By us, I mean, Theresa & Monica & Joanna! Details here.

30 Days of Biking

Do you know 30daysofbiking? It’s a bunch of people trying to ride their bikes every day for the month of April.  It starts tomorrow! Because April starts tomorrow!

A big part of rehearsal last night was dedicated to figuring out where and how bikes fit into our show, because maybe not everyone in the universe thinks of the bike as the Great Liberator! But some people do!  Right? When’s the last time you rode a bike? How was it? Seriously, I’m curious.

Bikes, freedom, fear.

Some context, for those of you who aren’t at rehearsal twice a week: There’s something in the piece we’re working on for July about bicycles & freedom.

What DO bikes have to do with freedom?  Riding in the summer, yeah, I get the freedom. I can go forever, anywhere I please.  And bicycles were heavily tied to the suffragette movement.  But riding in winter is mostly just scary. Some days more than others. The amount of willpower it takes to get on my bike when the world is full of ice, snow & angry drivers is sometimes nearly impossible to gather.

Sometimes once I’m on the bike all that falls away and the sense of freedom pervades. But sometimes I have to work hard to defeat those fears, to be aware and to remember at all times where I am and what I am doing. I wouldn’t call it pleasant, but it’s important. Good practice. Like having rehearsal, dredging through the crap of our lives and our fear and excitement to make shows. Good practice. Like blogging here. Practice, practice, practice.