Thursday 4 October 2012

STORY - To the Centre, Rosas!

Instant story written at the library, inspired by the music of Steve Reich and the dancing of Anna Terese de Keersmaecker

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 04/10/2012

To the Centre, Rosas!

It was a cultural experiment of great moment. The crowds had gathered overlooking the site – not hidden away in any lab was this procedure – and more entrepreneurial local Belgians had set up temporary stands and bleachers with refreshments laid on.

The subject of all this excitement was a pretty dark haired girl dressed in a simple white tunic, standing on a square of white sand about ten metres by ten, and tracing a perfectly curved line in the surface with a white tennis shoe.

Futuristic looking PA equipment tripodded around the square, evidently a stage of some kind, looming over the slip of a woman as if readying to crush her with sound.

The time was near. A white suited MC with Bryan Ferry strode around to the facing crowds with a microphone, asking them to be quiet in Flemish and French.

And they were. Car radios silenced and transistors were switched off and headphones detached from the Ipods that no-one could hear anyway. Reverence for an icon.

The woman stretched like a painting of Grace.

It began.

The music of violins entered the arena, mellifluously insistent and insistently repetitive. The girl began to dance, smooth precise movements fractionally never quite the same like water in a babbling brook dropping over an ancient polished rock. Circles, circles within circles, tracing an immaculate unspoiled pattern in the sand as she went round, not once or twice but forever. Arms whirling for balance as she spun formed contrails in the humid evening air. The best views were obtained from the Eastern stands, from where she could be seen against the ice lolly orange of the setting sun.

Eventually, after two hours during which she never stopped, not even for water, it could be seen that all that was hoped for in this landmark culture-scientific event was indeed starting to happen. The pattern she traced, every measured footstep exactly on top of thousands of others, was beginning to sink. The sand had been replaced by soil, then rock, and none of it withstood her dance.

All was ground away to the sub atomic level. It would take time, as the crowd settled in for the night, but she was on her way.

Rosas would be the first to dance her way to the centre of the Earth.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 04/10/2012

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