interludes

By Claire Yu

This piece is inspired by my love for dance and my team. It is a reflection on the moments from dance I find myself thinking about and the reasons for my passion for it.

1. Moments of
Dimensions
Chemistry
Tension in the air,
tension in your arms and legs and between your fingers and behind your eyes
The space between our bodies is sacred when we move we press against that bubble
 I can feel your heartbeat echoing in waves
We stretch out the rhythms between us
 elastic
 Your push and my pull
 balance
 catch me if I fall
Music so loud you can feel the vibrations in the floor
 or is that your heart
 beating, the blood
 pulsing through your veins in rhythms you feel so deeply
has it been a part of you all along?
Staccato breaths we crescendo
         Let your soul, elated, rise
The weight of your shadow draped heavy around my shoulders
         Your gravity holds me
to this world

2. Moments like this
When you close your eyes and feel the presence of the people around you
 Happy in that moment 
 Happy to exist
 To be there, and alive, and breathing
The look in your eyes that one time 
Your heartstrings reaching out
 Wrapping around mine, the intensity
 Of my passion meeting yours
And since that wordless moment there is something
  more between us, something
not tangible, but less empty, something
more inside my chest when I meet your eyes

3. Moments when we celebrate 
the beauty 
the harmony of intertwining limbs
the passion for movement
our passion for each other
energy we pass to one another without ever touching
The amalgam of you and me
Who says you can’t 
find beautiful things in tragedy? The hope 
still blossoming in your breast after the sky 
falls down
The brightness of the sun when the world
comes to an end
This is when we dance, spinning so fast
to match the dizzying pace of our lives
claiming significance to every cadence, every note, every bass, 
every beat — 
every heartbeat
every life
every breath