Men Come Men Go
after WB YEATS
A book of poety by W.B. Yeats fell off a shelf in the library at Conn. College in 1980 and landed at Wall Matthews' feet. Wall and Ara collaborated on Words for Music Perhaps bringing Wall's music and Ara's performance to stages including Dance Theatre Workshop and The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 2015 the piece was revived for The Dance Place in Washington, D.C. With the passing decades, we seem to understand more about the love, loss and spiritual life Yeats addresses through the Crazy Jane poems. In 2016, we were selected to perform the work at EAT (Emerging Artists) Theatre Festival in NYC. (Friends asked when we would stop emerging.) Then in the summer of 2019, Peter Cunningham and I set out to make a different film, but when we scouted the location of an abandoned fish factory, he rmemebered two lines from Crazy Jane on God which became the inspiration for the film. 1) I had wild Jack for a lover. 2) All things remain in God. Made a year ago, the film was not actively shared; however, it seems to resonate in this time of pandemic. It seems to evoke the passing of our wild lives as we are simultaneously offered the embrace of an unknown future.
Choreography & Performance: Ara Fitzgerald
Music: Wall Matthews
Film: Peter Cunningham