Rade

Rade

By Eve Schmitt

Which is what we call it when a parade of  Fairies comes by -- not that they all that often anymore, being diminished and all, but still, it's easy to get caught up with them. As it is with their dances. Never step into a fairy circle, they say, because you'll dance forever until someone pulls you out, or until you dance youself to death.

Say now, there's an idea for a performance piece. Have everybody dance in a circle and make music however they please. A Fluxus dance. There doesn't even have to be tones or organized sound. Who's to say that's not what the Fairies do already? Who said Fairy music had to have anything to do with how we think of music? They're alien enough as it is. Beings of fire and air, instead of earth and water like us dull mud people.

Presumably they know about definitions of "art" that us mud people are quick to dismiss as nonsense. Lord knows I've made fun of performance art enough times.

It seemed so strange, so incomprehensible, so impulsive, so...fey.

Or something like that.  

Sometimes it seems like there's no REASON for a performance piece -- no reason given, at least. the point is the performance and not what it means, the play and not the consequence, the action and not the result, the movement -- for some creatures what they live for is the freedom of movement. Maybe all of us.

The fair folk rarely tell you why they do what they do, and they probably don't know either.