Including Judgement
Last night I went to an online premier for a wicked and brilliant and thrilling dance at the Joyce, Giselle of Loneliness, by Katy Pyle. I urge you to buy a ticket and see the show, streaming through June 23rd. In it, seven queer dancers audition for the role of Giselle by dancing a compressed and extremely difficult sequence from the mad scene. Any one of them would blow your mind, and yet we as audience were asked to judge them according to criteria like Jumps and Extension, but also Ethereal and Hysteria and Suffering. I laughed and scoffed but then got into it. We were given 30 seconds so the judgements had to come fast. I picked a favorite and then became cruel. There I was, in love with each of these dancers and at the same time aware of my discriminating mind comparing and ordering them according to how the Ballet World might want me to. It was a perfect Koan, a moment of clashing contradiction presenting an opportunity to open the mind. The dance then skillfully and surprisingly turned toward inclusion, the mission of the company Ballez (free youtube class on Dégagé with Butch Nod above).
No preference no problem, implies Zen. Include everything. Well, I am proud to say that I don't judge. People tell me so all the time as they share sexual secrets and dark thoughts with me. The other day I was bragging about this fine quality to my daughter and found myself sputtering. In the context of motherhood I sure do behave like a judge. Mothers are thought to be responsible for the behavior of our offspring and so we try to teach them right and wrong. A lot of suffering springs from that line of thinking--incentives, failures, punishments, battles, and sometimes irrevocable cut-offs. And yet we must transmit morality and justice, right? We must transmit standards. We must transmit expectations, ideas of excellence, how to get ahead, how to be pretty, when to be strong, when to give it up, how to treat each other. Culture and context chew on each other and spit out judgment. If we can't avoid transmitting our world view we might as well examine it. But how do we examine it when we are in it? Tip: let someone blow up the world for you.
Lately I've been obsessed with how the idea of justice functions in our relationships. Considerable harm is caused by trying to push reality into the justice frame.
You don't deserve to be ill; you did everything right. or,
oh well, she was a smoker so... or
work hard and you get rewards, except you don't,
don't give people free money or they won't work, except it's not true.
Or even social justice. What are my rights, really? I don't know. I don't know what I deserve. Why do we need to believe we live in a just world? Why do I have ALS? What if I really had to choose one of those dancers? Could the decision ever be just? Agnes Callard argues for an asymmetrical meritocracy, a work-around necessary, she says, because we cannot tolerate existing in a world that isn't fair. Praise your friends for their efforts when they succeed, she says, but curse the world with them when they fail.
Fuck the world! Why did you give me this terrible illness?
Ah but why did you give me breeze and friendship smell of lilacs taste of tacos and my daughter? I didn't deserve those either. Praise the world!
Oh, I know it's more complicated than that. I'm just getting started.
By the way, Katy acknowledged my contribution to the flow of their work, for which I have to admit I am grateful. It's good to know how my life tucks into the rest, into the best. Sometimes judgement feels so good.
June 11, 2021
Elena Taurke
Reader Comments