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(1999, Ensemble, 30 minutes)

“I was interested in the ways in which we recover from sadness, injury, awkward situations, accumulated small hurts and devastating occurrences, navigating towards security and well-being. The work charts the transformation of a belly-ache into a belly-laugh.” – Keely Garfield

Intoxicated limbs and half-mast gestures hang in the air in repeated juxtapositions of precarious highs and tumultuous lows.

Oh me, oh my, look up and spy
me tumbling through a cliff cloud sky.
Like bird on distressed wing, I perch
as up ahead, I slip and lurch
into the nightly nightmare that
has become our dark, drunk chat.

You weave
I bob, I’m blown about
and so to bed on seeds of doubt
‘til morning brings the sunshine out.
“Run along” you say, “and play”
I think, I’ll live, take flight another day.
–Keely Garfield

“Under the dance’s lighthearted surface, pulses a delicate violence, a sense of impending disaster that requires of everyone a riveting attention. We watch them. They watch one another. We come away changed.” The Village Voice

“Glows…like a shiny, popping Christmas cracker stuffed with gewgaws so particular they seem essential.” New York Times

Premiere: Dance Theater Workshop (New York, NY), March 2, 1999
Commissioned by DTW’s Bessie Schönberg/First Light Program with funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional funding from The Jerome Foundation, Meet The Composer, Inc. with support from ASCAP, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated and The Virgil Thomson Foundation.