Ah, last night’s performance went to the core of the work. Starting from very little to work with… Except the beautiful space and set… And blooming into a rich expanding piece of music, dance, and liquid medium erotic reality of not being sure of anything. Starting with the sour face woman in the shadows on the bleachers. Why did she come to something which was advertised as
“REALITY PLAYINGS: experiments in experience/participation performance…Frank Moore, world-known shaman performance artist, will conduct improvised passions of musicians, actors, dancers, and audience members in a laboratory setting to create altered realities of fusion beyond taboos. Bring your passions and musical instruments and your senses of adventure and humor. Other than that,
ADMISSION IS FREE! (But donations will be accepted.]?
Such performances are designed to expose, expand, trespass boundaries… Not to define and stay within them! Ah, age-old questions! And no particular answers!
So starting with the sour face and the two dudes who weren’t giving much more, I just followed the bread crumbs into the void! I had the one guy chose something in my thick book of my writings to read. He picked one of the longest, most dense pieces, The
WARNING!
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
THIS PIECE MAY BE THREATENING TO YOUR EVERYDAY REALITY.
THIS PIECE MAY CAUSE QUESTIONING OF THE COMMON MORALITY.
THESE SYMPTOMS MAY APPEAR DAYS AFTER THE PIECE
WITHOUT WARNING…EVEN IF DURING THE PIECE,
YOU MAY FEEL AS IF NOTHING IS HAPPENING…
OR YOU MAY EVEN ENJOY IT. BUT ABOVE SYMPTOMS
MAY STILL APPEAR, LEADING TO RESTLESSNESS,
AND EVEN TO RADICAL CHANGE.
The above is the version of the sign that we have on the website.
We shifted back to the sour face woman. Corey said he started to think she might be a plant. This started us talking about my history of using plants in performances… And of people appearing to be plants when I hadn’t planted them. Then I read the piece, The Rehearsal,** which I wrote for the open audition part of the night. As we read it, it became uncanny how Sour Face captured at least the beginning of the role I was auditioning for! Was she a plant? Who else was a plant? What is the nature of performance? What is the nature of reality? Pretty good night’s work! And they didn’t want to go!
Tomek was on his way to a music festival in
JEN:
Was really excited about the performance. Not knowing what's going to happen is fun! DA BOYZ had put a lunch plate together for me so I ate that and got changed and then came down to the ph. We got Frank in the car and were on our way. Had a thought that maybe Erika would show up but then I didn't think so. She must have been thinking about it because we all had the same feeling.
We got to the space and set up which is always fun, putting up lights and banners, setting up the sound and the swag table. Pretty soon a girl showed up and was hanging around by the door. Frank told her to come on in. When we got started she sat down on the mats in front of Frank and he asked her how she found out about this. She told him she saw a flyer. He asked what attracted her to it. She said she's into performance art like dancing, singing, theater etc. She was starting to look suspicious and uncomfortable. She asked if she was the only audience there and if this was a performance or an open audition. Frank said that if she came for the performance, then it's a performance. When Frank asked her what she did she really got uncomfortable and started asking about the video camera. Frank said she could leave anytime, but she stayed. She asked about audience participation and when Frank asked her what she felt about that, she said she thought there should be clear boundaries about that. Then another man walked in and sat down. She asked him if he was a part of this and he said no. Then Frank said now he is! When Frank started asking him how he heard about this, the girl took the opportunity to run out the door. The performance got off to a very intense start with her!
The guy said he saw a flyer and was involved a long time ago with someone who was associated with eroplay. He said he wanted to see if this was still going on, and if he was still here too. He gave some cryptic answers to Frank's questions. When Frank asked what he expected, he said why expect anything when this is what he's experiencing right now. Frank said exactly. Frank had him come up and read anything he wanted out of Frank's binder of writings. He chose to read a long story about the magic life of the cave mother. It deepened everything right away, bringing all into a trance.
Another man came in who had found out about this from a flyer as well. Neat to hear how well the flyers work! It seems to be the most effective marketing, getting people directly at street level. He had seen something in People's Park long ago that was like this. Suddenly Charles showed up who had danced with Frank in the last performance. He brought his instrument! He sat down and started putting it together, some kind of tenor sax, while Frank talked to him about missing the girl who freaked out, saying that's why it's important to be here on time. He said he was moving today and had a few things to do before coming, but he couldn't believe someone had already freaked! He said usually that happens later!
Frank asked Charles to jam with him as the second man who came in undressed Linda and me, and put our costumes on. This time we wore Betty's Hawaiian jewelry. The guy was creative, taking our tops off down our bodies, untying all the little ties on my shirt, tying the boas around our waists. It was really cute. Then we danced together as Charles and Frank jammed on. The first guy who had come played keyboards, and the other guy and a woman who had come in were told they could play whatever they wanted. Linda and I moved together, caressing and vocalizing and writhing. Sometimes it tickled! Felt soft and flowing, going with the music, going with each other, 4 arms and legs, bodies moving in harmony. We could hear the door opening and closing. At one point I looked and saw Tomek had come!
Then Linda and I danced with Frank, merging, melting. The music was building and the feeling was deep and intense, everything pumping and flowing out out out. Very expansive. And our skin melting in, soft, small, intimate, going in deeper and deeper. Pushing through any resistance, ploughing on, soft strength. The rhythm of life, relentless, eternal. We were entranced and it was as if the story of the cave mother was coming to life.
After the dance we all talked about what we experienced. The man who undressed us said that it was great Frank getting a lap dance from two lovely ladies. Frank said mmmm, that was the easy part. Tomek loved the roto-toms and said he found a new way of expression with them. Said he must get a set. Linda said it was as if we had been pushing and pushing all night, pushing through whatever, like the girl who first came in. Pushing through boundaries, and how everything opened up as we pushed on. The boyz said it was really intense from the get go and really trance inducing. Mikee said that too, and that the music was great, and he shot a whole roll of film! The first guy who arrived answered Frank's question "was it satisfying?" with a no, but later he said that he had felt centered and balanced when he got here and as the performance continued he started to feel unsettled. Now he felt like his world was kind of scattered. Frank told him about the warning sign that he used to hang on the door of performances telling people that this is an effect of the performance, their reality will be shifted and it could take a while for this to happen.
Then Frank had Linda read what he wrote last night for the audition. The main body of the audition piece was something he had written for Erika years ago. It started with someone rolled in a tight ball and then slowly expanding into the space, eventually incorporating Frank into their space and then finally shedding their clothes and dancing with Frank. But the first part really blew us all away, because it had the person pulling out of character and exposing Frank as the director, asking him suspicious questions about what he was doing. They were to set their boundaries for what they would and wouldn't do in this audition piece. It was just like the first girl who was here! She was playing the part exactly the way Frank wrote it. Was she a plant?
It was a great night! Frank said maybe one of the best performances he's done! Something so intense and powerful came out of seemingly nothing. We didn't even know if anyone would show up. We had no idea who would play music or what would happen. The girl at the beginning started the night off with heavy resistance, but we pushed on and everything opened like having Charles and then Tomek show up. The band was amazing! The dance opened up everything, echoing the story that was read, bringing everything in. We were blown away.
DA BOYZ:
It was really fun to be doing these monthly performances! The caravan to the space, and setting up, everything was fun. What a great space! And then the performance was starting ... a girl was already there, hanging back in the shadows ...
Frank asked her to come on in and sit down, closer, and the performance had begun! She looked very disturbed by what was going on ... she was very closed off, very tight. The look on her face was like something very wrong was going on here ... Frank started asking her about herself ... how did she hear about the performance? She had seen a flier ... And what attracted her to it? She said that she was into performance art ... What kind? She said something like that she was into singing and dancing ... And then she asked him why he was asking her questions? Was this a performance, an audition? Frank said it was both actually, but if she was there for the performance, then it was the performance. She asked if it was being videotaped ...? Linda said yes ... She said something about being uncomfortable with that, and Frank told her that she could leave anytime she wanted to. But she didn't leave. Frank also told her that this was an audience participation performance, that talking to her was part of it ... She looked very suspicious of what was going on, mistrustful ... it was very very intense! She had asked if she was the only audience person there?? Frank said yes, so far! Then an older guy walked in and sat down ... The girl turned to him and asked him if he was part of "this project"? Frank said, "He is now!" It was an amazingly intense interaction with her ... it was almost like it was scripted, almost like she was a plant ...
But when Frank started talking to the guy, she got up, grabbed her stuff and walked right out!
But Frank ploughed and pushed on! After talking to the new guy for a little bit, Frank asked him to come up and read one of Frank's poems ... he would pick it himself ... he happened to pick the Magical Cave Lovers poem, which just deepened everything ... another guy came in at that point and sat down ... and listened to the long poem that just carried you into another reality, another time, place, dimension ...
When we all came out the other side, Charles soon arrived, and started setting up his bass clarinet, and Frank did a little market research, finding out where both the first two guys had seen the fliers? The Asian guy had seen the fliers we put up at Ashby and
After telling Charles about the freak out he had missed (Charles saying, "Already! That usually happens later!"), Frank had Charles join him in a jam, and the writer would play keyboards, and the Asian guy would undress Linda and Jen and put their "costumes" on ... Betty would get to see her new jewelry! Charles sat next to Frank, jamming with his bass clarinet and voice ... the music was amazing, beautiful, deep ... it felt like each new thing that happened drew the feeling deeper, and you fell deeper into a trance ... People kept coming into the space, and leaving again ... and then Tomek arrived, got his accordion set up, and joined the music, which was incredible, just kept transforming, evolving ... Linda and Jen dancing together in the strobes and slides was so beautiful, made everything much smaller, and expansive at the same time, connected a lot ... and then when Frank, Linda and Jen all danced together, it went ever deeper, smaller, erotic, aroused and you felt everything connected with the poem of the magical cave lovers ... everything carried the trance deeper and deeper ... transforming everything ...
And then we were talking about it ... Charles had needed to leave near the end ... Mikee said that he was singing out the door that he "had to go, had to be somewhere ...!" The two other guys did not have a lot to say, but you could feel that the older man who had played the keyboards was very affected by it, but maybe did not have the words ... he stayed almost until the end of our time there, helping us break down the set, etc., had popcorn ... It was neat to talk about it, and we talked a lot about the girl at the beginning, how amazing her freak out was, how intense ... Corey said that he had thought perhaps she was a plant ... And then Frank read the piece he had written for those who would come for the audition ... And she literally had played the first segment of his piece to the hilt! Linda said she overplayed it! It was amazing that by continuing to push through, not stopping, as Linda said, it felt almost like the persistence brought in the other people, one by one, to deepen everything ... These monthly performances are so much fun! Frank said at one point, "This is working!"
We broke everything down, cleaned up, devoured popcorn, kept talking about the performance ... Everything was very smooth ...
Soon the LUVeRmobile was heading back home ... we finished up the close down of the space, and were soon driving home too, talking about how amazing the performance was, how hungry we were! ... how it was neat to hear where people had seen the fliers and decided to come ...
Soon we were back here, unloading, talking about how there was no Erika ! We had all thought about the possibility at some point ... and why not? Why wouldn't she be thinking about coming, if she was wanting to make amends, come back, etc.?? Maybe she sent the mistrustful girl!
* THE MAGICAL CAVE LOVERS
by
FRANK MOORE
copyright
the cave is our world, his and mine. together around the fire in the warm cave. it has always been this way. mother and grandmother...mothers and grandmothers have always been in the cave above the tribe, have always been talking to the world spirits for the tribe, have always been taking the tribe out of the world of survival, cold wet fear...into our body cave of warm laughing joy, taking them into us deep for awhile.
and there has always been one of his kind in the cave. mother said that before i was born, the one who she lived in the cave with died. his death cursed the tribal field, cursed the tribal planting. the tribe again survived only by the hunt and the gathering. the spirit of the field would only come back when mother could mate in the tribal field with a healer after hair grew on his body. until that time, during times of moon blood, mother led the tribal women in the chant of plant magic, keeping their knowing of the secrets of growing alive during the years of waiting.
as the world spirits desired it, for many years no deformed male baby who could be a healer lived for more than for a few days within the tribe...even when mother secretly took such babies from the sacrifice rock and brought them to the cave, where she and the old healer tried to bring them fully into life.
so after the death of the healer, mother had to make the secret and dangerous journey to the sacrifice rocks of other tribes in her quest for a deformed boy baby, for a spirit that didn't dwell in the world of survival, for a magical son who could be a healing bridge between all realities. mother had to hide behind the sacrifice rock of each tribe for many nights, waiting for a father to put a deformed boy child on the rock to die.
one day the tribe discovered that mother was not in the cave. they went into a ritual dance and a fast, piling all the food outside the cave to bring her back. they had a feast when they discovered that she had returned with a new healer. she had found a deformed boy baby. she saved him from the sacrifice rock and carried him to the cave. there she gave birth to him. everyone knows that cave magicians can give birth to even full-grown men. so no one was at all surprised to see this baby in the cave.
mother took care of him, raised him in the cave. she grew to understand his sounds, his moving body, his spirit talk. i understand him now. as he grew up, his healing magic became physical touch. he was in the future and the past and the world spirit...linked with mother's body. now linked with my body.
when hair grew on his body, mother took him as her magical mate. then the secrets of growing, the magic of the plants, again came out of the moon cave and into the field. once again, the spirit entered the field and was attended to by the women of the tribe.
once again, before every harvest and every planting, the tribe carried mother and her magical mate to the fields. there she would take him deep inside her. they became one body together in ritual pleasure, offering the pleasure to the earth spirit as a thanksgiving. these were the only times he left the cave. these were the only times that she took him deep into her, although they were always together in the sacred play when they were in the cave, rubbing, licking, laughing, moaning, crying within the awareness of life. he and i are still in that awareness cave.
mother got big and i came out of her into the cave. if i was a male baby, mother would have gone like a spirit with the baby out of the cave to where the woman of the chief slept. she would have put the baby beside the woman and then slipped away. the boy would be born to the woman of the chief. the magic of the cave mother can only be passed on to a daughter of the cave. if i did not come from mother's body, she would have gone on a quest for a cave daughter, leaving the healer alone in the cave. the tribeswomen would take care of him as best as they could. but if mother would die on the quest, the healer would die. then the tribe would die.
i grew up cuddled up between their bodies, playing with their bodies, smelling the herbs mother hung to dry in the cave, smelling the teas and other medicines mother made from them to give those who came to the cave to be healed. i ate the food and drank the water and the milk that the tribe brought to the mouth of the cave everyday.
i always played with mother and the healer...to me, he is laughing face because his hairy face always has tickled me...when they played together. but she put me into the child hole to play whenever she and he did rituals with a tribesperson. grandmothers from long ago dug these child holes. there is one just outside the cave for when mother danced with the chief before every hunt, before every battle, arousing his power.
i now arouse him.
there is a child hole at mother's secret place where she goes when the tribe faces death from nature offended...the secret place where she offers herself to earth spirits as a sacrifice by working herself up by dancing and rubbing until who she is burns away. and there is a giant children hole in the middle of the moon cave where all the tribeswomen with children without body hair go during the times of blood. i watched the rituals from the child hole. when i could get out of the child hole, i could take part in the rituals...even before body hair and times of moon blood.
mother started teaching me cave mother magic and how to combine and blend it with the magic of laughing face. laughing face has always been my brother, my playmate. i grew up understanding his sounds, understanding his body, hearing his thoughts, seeing through his psychic eyes. he is my body. since i had body hair, he has been my mate.
mother started teaching me cave mother magic. cave mother magic is body magic. the body of the cave mother is the body of the earth. after i could get out of the children hole in the moon cave, mother started teaching me cave mother magic. mother said a long time ago the women of the tribe did not bleed together as one body in the full bright moon time. each woman bled alone at her own time away from the tribal fire, bled alone in dangerous cold darkness. one day, the moon, full and bright, told cave mother that the women will only have their time of blood in the nights and days of bright moon. the moon told cave mother that on the night before the full bright moon, all the women with all the children before body hair should leave the tribal fire, carrying a flaming branch, and dwell together in the special cave until the last moon blood fell. the times of moon blood are the most magical.
during times of moon blood, the elder men with the chief stay with the healer in the healing cave, taking care of him until the cave mother returns. they feed him, give him drink, bathe him. but they themselves fast and chant and rock and gently touch him. they can not understand him, can not see through his eyes. but as they sit around him, his spirit fills them and they are filled with visions.
mother began my magical training by taking me with her when she left the moon cave during the waiting day and the day of restoring. on these journeys she would collect herbs, special stones, healing mud, and all the other magical objects that she would prepare and use with the healer in their cave, our cave. she told me the story and the power behind each object. she told me the secret magical stories hidden within the stories that the women shared within the moon cave, rubbing one another, rocking together, enjoying their single body.
after the times of blood, when we returned to the healing cave, mother started letting me help her prepare the healing objects. mother said the objects by themselves do not have healing powers. but the body magic calls forth the healing effect of the object just as mother and the healer call forth the healing magic within each other. after someone left the cave after a ritual, mother started explaining to me what had happened. most of this explaining was not done in words, but by mother and laughing face playing with me, turning my body and spirit on.
laughing face would melt into the person's body as they played, seeing what was needed. sometimes by touching deeply, he could transmute the inner sickness. other times, when he felt death was approaching, he and mother would arouse the body spirit to melt with death. but most of the time, as the healer was physically melted with the person, mother saw with the healer's eyes, felt with his body. then the healer would lay back, and mother would begin her body dance, rubbing wet warm, sucking the other into her, licking coolness, blowing life into the other, dancing hard and long deep into the woman cave. the other could be the ill person. often it was the healer. just before she left, mother started to pick me to be the other dancer. the dance would fade into sleep. then just before dawn, mother would wake the person up, give him herbs or a magical object, give him rituals, then would send him back into the tribe in survival.
i absorbed all of this. i saw boys come to the healing cave when they first had hair on their bodies. the boy with first body hair would be barred from entering the moon cave on the first time of blood after body hair first appeared. the cave mother would ritualistically force his mother to not bring him into the moon cave again because he would never be again her son. the cave mother would send him to the healing cave. there, the chief would bar him from the cave, telling him to sit on the rock outside the cave, to wait for cave mother, to wait, not moving, without food, without water, without sleep.
days later, the cave mother would return to the healing cave, without giving any notice to the sitting would-be man. she would enter the cave and would lie beside the healer. the elders would slowly dance from the cave to the sitting would-be man, lift him up, carrying him into the cave mother, lying him on her, belly on belly. then the elders would leave to dance outside of the cave.
mother would gently let the boy enter her body, guiding him to melt with her in body and spirit, pulling him into the deep trance of transforming pleasure. then, when the boy had died to his child soul, the elders of the tribe would enter the cave, lift the entranced would-be man onto their shoulders, and carry him out of the cave and on into his quest for a vision, for a new soul, and for a proof of his worthiness to be within the tribe.
when a girl first entered the moon cave on her first time of blood, the women gathered around her and rocked her gently day and night until the moon blood stopped flowing between her legs. then they washed her childhood away, washed her into womanhood, washed her first in their moon blood, then washed her in clear cold water, welcoming her into their collective body.
then the cave mother took the new woman outside of the cave, laying her down on a bed of leaves. mother would reach deep inside the new woman, gently breaking the seal of skin, if it had not been broken in child play. the mother started calling forth from inside the new woman, started calling forth wave upon wave of intense moaning burning pleasure moving within the new woman's body, joyfully burning up the little girl's insides, the body of the young new woman writhing, opening wide to let the whole universe in. when the little girl had been completely burnt up, the tribal women took the new woman into their circle to rock with her.
as my mother did before, i live with laughing face in our cave of love and play, far outside the reality of cold survival of the tribe. most of the time, people of the tribe come to our cave not to be healed of some sickness, nor to know the future, nor to appease the spirits, nor anything that you in your time might think would be magically important. most of the time, they come to be rocked by me and the healer, to be sung to by us, to play with us, to come into our personal love of warm playing skin. the possibility of this personal love has not truly entered their reality of survival...except in their memories of what they have experienced within our cave...slowly this pleasure playing of personal love has leaked out of the cave over the lifetimes of the many cave mothers from the time when the first young girl found the first healer and hid with him in a cave, sneaking out to steal a blazing branch from the group fire of the human pack, sneaking out at night to gather berries and fruit...sneaking out so that the pack wouldn't kill the useless deformed boy...sneaking out until she became an earth spirit to the pack when they caught sight of flashes of her. the young cave couple lived a new kind of existence together. in the pack there has always been the physical love of a mother for her babies, and children of the pack always have played together. but when the children entered the adult pack reality of cold survival which was dominated by fear, by individual isolation, and by being together solely out of physical need, this love and this child play quickly faded into the ultimate black beyond the light of the night fire of the pack.
but in the first cave couple, the personal love that was the mother-child physical love within the pack transmuted into the personal love between people that hadn't been linked by the birth cord. this new kind of love was what melted the bodies of the first cave couple together. their playing together as children in adult bodies called forth this new kind of love. slowly their play revealed totally new physical pleasures which humans had never experienced before. in the pack, there was an ever-present lurking of a violent urge erupting in some male, grabbing a female from behind just to let her go a minute later after the pressure of the urge had been relieved, the woman going off to soothe her wounds.
but within their cave playing, the first cave mother and the first healer began discovering the many paths of pleasure within their body of two...long giggling tickling belly warm chest moaning exploding white light turning colors sleeping warm skin. on these paths of pleasure, the moon came to them and taught them magic. the moon told many strange things...that men were not just protectors and providers...that men have a direct and active role in the creation of life...that everyone in the pack is physically connected to one another as a body. becoming aware of these things would transform the pack into a tribe, calling forth tribal love, extending into the land and animals. this awareness would come slowly as the tribes people visited the cave, visited the personal love of the cave mother and the healer, experience within their own bodies the new physical pleasure. they would take tiny bits of the expanding cave reality back to their relationships within the tribe. the moon said every pack had a cave couple developing, hidden, playing.
i am seeing into your time through laughing face's eyes. i'm seeing past the marble temples where cave mothers became sex goddesses...past the men of power dividing the cave mother from the wounded healer, chaining her to promote isolation by turning her into just a safety valve for the release of guilt of power and the frustration of unattainable desire.
but laughing face and i are still in our hidden cave waiting for you to come and play with us.
** THE REHEARSAL
the idea i have could be called the rehearsal. you would play an uptight actress who for some reason agreed to be in a piece that is over her head, beyond her limits. this is the first rehearsal. the piece starts with her doing the PIECE with my character...so the audience thinks we are just doing a piece. but then she pulls out of her character, hitting a block. she starts questioning my motives as the director [revealing i'm the director]..."oh, this is just a trick for you to get fucked!"'..."i can portray INTIMACY without taking my clothes off!" but she psychically knows what i'm saying. so you will do both of our parts of our dialog. at some point she goes back into the ritual...until she reaches another block, then the dialog continues...but it gets deeper, more expansive, more personal each time.
that is the structure of the piece. and below is the physical backbone ritual.
A DANCE RITUAL
Frank Moore
Lower the lights.
Squat in the center of the room, holding yourself very tightly, rocking, fully dressed, maintaining boundaries, making whatever sounds, all tight, all “self-contained.”
When you are ready…it doesn’t matter how long this takes…let yourself expand into the room, while still squatting and rocking. Relax.
Let yourself expand into me when you are ready…it doesn’t matter how long this takes…and take me into you when you are ready…it doesn’t matter how long this takes…all the while squatting and rocking.
When you are ready, move around the room, making deep sounds within a relaxed freedom. Slowly remove your clothes… when you are ready…it doesn’t matter how long this takes. Let yourself expand outside of the studio, taking everything into you.
When you are ready…it doesn’t matter how long this takes…dance with me, drawing everything in the room into the rapture state of our combine being, making deep sounds within a relaxed freedom.
When you are ready…it doesn’t matter how long this takes…sit on me and rock/rub our combined being into a rapture state, making deep sounds within a relaxed freedom. Remain in this state.
Frank Moore
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