tingrides.life
Four clay oven rolls, a fogged stage, and a curtain that never opens at Hofesh Shechter's Theatre of Dreams.
I wasn't supposed to eat four traditional clay oven rolls (蔥燒餅, 蟹殼黃, 黑芝麻糖餅, 糖心酥餅) right before a contemporary dance show.
But the lady behind me in the queue was persuasive: "這家燒餅店很難排喔，又便宜，你第一次來，不都嘗嘗看，可惜了" (It's super hard to get a spot here, it's cheap, if you don't try them all it's a pity!)
The clay oven rolls were warm, and sometimes you just say yes to things.
I went to see Hofesh Shechter's "Theatre of Dreams" at TIFA. The whole stage was fogged white when I entered. A dancer walked in from the audience. Curtains opened and closed, breaking the stage into frames. Music that sounded like a heartbeat.
I was in and out of sleep. Somewhere between the clay oven rolls' carbohydrate coma and the fog, I stopped being sure what was dream and what was stage.
A naked dancer appeared. Then the musicians appeared in bright red, a live band of three, appearing and disappearing like the rest of it. At one point, even the audience started dancing with the music.
Near the end, the lights came up, and all the dancers sat quietly facing an enormous curtain. The curtain never opened. We never found out what was behind it.
And I cried.
The dancers weren't arriving anywhere. They were just fully, completely in it. That's hard for me. All the times I rushed past the wanting to get to the having. All the curtains I tried to open before I'd even finished watching the scene I was in.
Or it was the four clay oven rolls. Hard to say.
Either way, I'll go back. To the dance jams, the workshops, the fog, the strange. I don't need to be the best dancer in the room.
I just need to keep showing up while the curtain is still closed.