I was a few weeks into my second semester at Youngstown State University on September 11, 2001. 9 years later, aspects of that day are still very vivid in my mind - entering the YSU costume shop to find professors and fellow students huddled around a small black and white television and to learn of the tragedy unfolding in New York City...walking down the street with students to pray in a nearby Catholic church, staring blankly forward in shock during the packed service...staying glued to the TV in my apartment until the wee hours of the morning, hoping the rescuers would find more survivors...the feeling of not wanting to go to bed, as if my staring at the TV would somehow help anyone in anyway in NYC...
In the summer of 2002, I decided to choreograph a piece inspired by 9/11 for the 2003 Dance Ensemble Concert the following Spring. My piece was about finding hope after despair and was called "Within and Beyond." I was having trouble choosing a song for my piece that would translate in words the emotions my dancers and I would be expressing through our bodies. Then by chance one day, on TV, a soap opera I never watch was on as background noise when a Peter Gabriel song began to play. The first notes stopped me in my tracks - it was the perfect song for my piece. I went online and tried to figure out what the name of the song was. I ended up emailing the soap opera directly and they responded...the song was Here Comes the Flood. See it performed live on
YouTube.
When the night shows
The signals grow on radios
All the strange things
They come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
Still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There's no point in direction we cannot
Even choose a side.
I took the old track
The hollow shoulder, across the waters
On the tall cliffs
They were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
And as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain
Was warm and soaked the crowd.
Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
In any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.
When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll
Use up what we used to be.
Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
In any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.
It is the most incredible song, and, for me, it will always be about 9/11.
Here is an image from the end of "Within and Beyond," where my character finally begins to rise out of her despair towards hope. With the lighting effect paired with my movement, some people said it looked like I began to floated upwards right before the lights faded to black.
It's 9 years later after 9/11...and it still feels like yesterday...
