The End brings together ideas, personal history, and formal choreographic concerns around memory, loss, death, and endings.
Inspired by a catastrophic trip “home” to Los Angeles, during which I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Klara and the Sun” in which Klara, an Artificial Friend no longer in use, looks back on her existence, sorting through and making sense of her knowledge and experience, during her “well deserved” slow fade. For me, her somewhat confused process mirrored my 87th year old mother’s decline from a form of dementia which left her delusional. During my four months in Los Angeles I said goodbye to my dying uncle. My mother’s caregiver also died unexpectedly. I helped my sister move my mother into a “memory care” center in the desert. Then, I cleared out my parent’s home of 63 years (my childhood home) so it could be sold. This was my first trip to Los Angeles since the sudden death of a close L.A. friend the year before.
One day while driving my phone shuffled and played The Door’s “The End.” For the first time I listened closely to the lyrics. I had used this song as source material in making X (2010). X was a dance performed without accompaniment, but which in parts used “The End” as a silent score and Jim Morrison’s performance captured in the Ray Manzarek’s concert film as source material for improvisations that became an important part of the work.
My goal in Los Angeles became to make a good ending...for my mother. This led me to think of Hmmm... (2009), a dance with a good ending and then a final ‘bad ending,’ where all that had been built slowly falls apart in a confused slow fade.
It was then that I conceived of this project, a dance about endings.
At the start of the dance the room is fully bright. The lights slowly fade, until the last part of the dance is completely in the dark. I use the song “The End” and again Jim Morrison’s performance as inspiration, text and structure for my actions. Then at the end in the dark a manipulated backwards version of the song plays.
The End, 2023, Electric Lodge, Venice, CA
photograph:Denise Leitner
Funding Credits