The endurance of this water, a note to the dancers
Back in 2019, I choreographed my final large scale piece at NYU as a student of the Tisch School of the Arts Dance department. As a thank you, as well as a musing on the gratitude I felt for my process with these lovely creators and movers, I sat to write a small blurb. It would become part of my cast gifts, a scroll of my abstracted thoughts culled from hours and hours of research and dance within the rooms of 111 2nd Ave and local branches of Le Pain Quotidien. Nestled among sea shells and sea glass within a cork stopped bottle, the note read:
A jar full of sea glass. Showing the endurance of the water. The current. The sand. The effects of time. The cycle of wear. I find this to be beautifully representative. Begin with an idea, let it take its time to settle down, to be tumbled around and beaten up, start out raw and arrive at a state of visible work but admirable change and transformation. This is our piece. I say our piece because each and every one of you is as much a part of its creation as myself. We had fostered a tide for our ocean and let its current run. Let our world gain eleven beings to exist within. Reward our world with a scintillating sound scape. Wash it with color. Existing underwater, becoming seaweed, all with the poise and focus any choreographer would be blessed to watch and learn from. This process, albeit long and complex with so many moving parts, has been a life changing stepping stone in my growth, and I hope has served a similar purpose for you all.
With much gratitude and abundant love,
Jenna Sharko, resident shark of our newfound ocean
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I keep a copy of this note floating somewhere in my bedroom. Thumbtacked to a cork board or sitting within yet another jar of sea shells collected over time, it serves as a reminder to me that past creative works exist interminably in the mind of the artist, participants, and any corners of the world the work may reach. Though birthed years ago by virtually another entirely different version of myself, the underlying curiosities of this dance work are always finding themselves present in my life perhaps guised in another form. Thoughts live cyclically, much like the convection current unearthed by those original eleven bodies and twelve collectively inspired minds.
