The Lift - KT - 2nd Rehearsal Try Before the Main Event

Attempt #2. It should be noted at the moment I am barely getting out of bed. Given my funk, I was having some serious doubts about my availability for the old “Lift”. After our last attempt to push people up the hill at the market, Aaron suggested we dub the project “the rejection dance”. Um-really wasn’t looking forward to another journey down that road.

I have been learning about the limbic brain state, an embryologically older part of the brain developed to manage “fight” or “flight” chemicals. The more I learn, the more I realize our current score (without any warning, approach a stranger, put your hands on them and try to get them to let you help them) is putting people in their most limbic (reactive) state. Touch a stranger on the street? They will fight or flight – end of story. The current construction of the projects is doomed. Something major has to give for this project to continue. The level of psychic wear and tear on the dancers (me) is not tolerable (in even the strongest state) and besides, it just doesn’t work. So my newest thought is to get people out of a limbic state, into a curious, open mind.

Plan B
We gave ourselves a frame - a sandwich board offering free rides, a video camera, chalk drawings on the sidewalk- circles saying stand here for free ride. Immediately things changed. We weren’t scary anymore. More dopey or silly or interesting or lovely or whimsical or dumb. But not scary. It was better – how? More engaging with people – a window IN instead of a shutting down. I just feel better right now. Happier, hopeful, more connected to the world. Does that count? My feelings in the outcome?

A young, Japanese tourist woman asked me why? Why are you doing this? I said because it was nicer to have someone help you up the hill than do it alone. She shyly asked me to push her up the hill. By the end, her entire body weight was leaning back on me and she was looking up at the sky laughing and telling me the birds were flying overhead. She said, “I just got here and I love Seattle!” and predictably asked her friends to take a picture of us at the top.