On Fire

Premiered at the Rieman Center, Harvard University, May 21 & 22, 2004

Choreographed and danced by Kimerer LaMothe

Composed and performed by Geoffrey Gee

Spoken by Courtney Bickel Lamberth

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Dance Department

We spend years of our lives sitting, and the time we spend sitting shapes us. It shapes how we think and feel about ourselves and our bodies; it shapes our beliefs and our values. It shapes how we think and feel about dance. On Fire explores what we could think and feel and know if we spent more of our time dancing. It wonders with Martha Graham who said, "Perhaps the dance is an ecstatic offering on all levels of experience to the act of life."

Quicktime Excerpts*

On Fire is a 55 minute solo dance divided into two sections by a musical inerlude. Excerpts 1 & 2 are from the first half of the piece, and excerpts 3 through 6 are from the second.

1. From Sitting (40 seconds)

Text by Rene Descartes

2. From Sitting (1:13)

3. From Spark of Awareness (50 seconds)

Text by Friedrich Nietzsche

4. From Spark (44 seconds)

5. From Learning to Laugh (1:10)

6. From Perhaps (1:57)

Text by Martha Graham

7. From Perhaps (1 minute)

*These excerpts are from a recording of a studio performance given at Swarthmore College, where Kimerer was invited to teach and perform by the departments of both Dance and Religion, sponsored by the Cooper Foundation, November 2004.