It ain't easy what we have asked these performers to do each night. Loop Diver is not a pleasurable piece to perform. It is physically demanding, obliviously repetitive and (perhaps) emotionally numbing. I don't know what the physical or emotional sensations are but I know it's not "fun". I know it because I feel it from the performers when they are not performing. When they show up at the theater each day, I feel a kind of fatigue? Hesitance? Disappointment? Not sure exactly what – and this is not a critical statement just an observation. But I sense that it takes a very different kind of preparation to perform this work (one of the dancers told me so tonight). Another of the dancers asked me a few days ago what I thought this piece was about, for me. I told him that it was about my life. I said it in a kind of glib way and laughed and walked away. I laughed because it's scary for me. I realized a few days later that, while that answer is true, it is useless to the performers. They don't know my life really. So, to put it in a more universal frame, I told them tonight that the work is about " the emotional repercussions of being caught in a loop, a pattern, a cycle with the intention of transcendence". Transcendence can be escape, or acceptance. It can be resistance or comfort. It can be and already is, actually, a personal response by each performer to the imposition of the loop, pattern and cycle. So, while the imposition of the structure is me, the journey and response is theirs. And they are doing a PHENOMINAL job of embodying the subtle responses to this imposition as set upon them. Everyone that gives me feedback on this work talks about the performers and how committed and precise and intense and involved they are. I know this. I know that this work IS the performers. Their interpretation is what makes it powerful for me. And personal for me. Isn't that funny that a piece about my life can be so beautifully expressed by people who aren't me.

So, while we are still working to make the personal and the theatrical fit together, and work on details and intonation, I am deeply moved by these performers willingness to go through a not so pleasurable experience each night. Of course, I am making an assumption that it's not pleasurable. I may be wrong. I do hope there is a kind of pleasure in the process and discoveries that can be made on stage in the moment – an exquisite pain? And, I have to say it isn't easy for me either. Last night I had the sensation that I have seen the work too many times and have lost all connection to the decisions that were made along the way. That's normal. But, tonight I sat in a different place in the audience and was again refreshed. Phew.

Well, in closing I will say thank you JJ, Ben, Rob, Johanna, Lucia, Daniel for inhabiting my personal space and seeking to find the you in it. I will continue to help of course But you're doing a good job already. And it hasn't gone unnoticed.

Good night,
Dawn