December, 29th, 2012

Fana Tesfagiorgis | Splendid Isolation II

“Jessica Lang’s Splendid Isolation II is perhaps the most emotionally challenging piece for me. Being a solo, there’s a lot of responsibility on one person to set the tone for the entire stage. That said, I know that whatever I’m expressing has to come from a real place. With all of the lavish port de bras and torso movements, it pairs well with thoughts of longing, nostalgia and loneliness. Other times (most of the time), the character is myself, my imagination mixed with different experiences that I’ve been through allow me to express whatever emotions a piece calls for. As tired and sore as we all know we’ll be later, it’s never a waste knowing that someone in the audience needed to receive exactly what we could give. When I feel drained physically, emotionally and spiritually, it tells me that the audience not only received a performance, but in a sense a part of me. The only thing that feels better than that moment is when I’m holding hands with eleven more people after an encore…
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