Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2009 In Passing Julia Allisson Cost Scripps College Recommended Citation Cost, Julia Allisson, "In Passing" (2009). Scripps Senior Theses. Paper 14. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/14 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The curtain rises. A wailing note fills the space, like a distant train, as the lights rise on bodies crawling quickly along a rope stretched horizontally across the stage. The bodies are crawling from either side of the space, converging and intertwining, several thick along the rope. One dancer emerges from the highway on the floor, slowly bringing his cupped hands to his face. The lights dim to silhouette. The people on the floor pull each other up to standing on stage left and one dancer climbs up their bodies and over their heads. The shape of her crawling body progresses through and above the group, which is moving beneath her to support her overhead passage towards stage right. The dancer that had emerged from the crawling highway is still dancing on his own, and the group is moving towards him. When they meet, he reaches up and carries the raised dancer down. The dancers rush to stage right, clustered over the rope. One person on the floor climbs urgently through the group’s ankles and then along the rope towards stage left, while lights slowly rise on the standing bodies, whose arms and torsos are spilling backwards, as though they are the jet stream from the body surging forward beneath them.