I Once Was My Father
On the Boards’ Northwest New Works Festival commissioned Molly Sides to create a piece during a time when her family back in Idaho was crumbling. Her father was in a psych ward, slowly dying of dementia, his mind and body unraveling day by day. In September 2013, the larger-than-life man—the con artist, hound dog and complex, caring father—died, leaving behind a candid autobiography filled with his many secrets. She didn’t know how to grieve. Instead, she did the only thing she knew to do: Turn the experience into art.
teamMUSIC & CHOREOGRAPHY
Molly Sides
VIDEOGRAPHY
Brit Zerbo
ServicesArt Direction
Videography
VENUEOn the Boards
Seattle, WA
Year2014
“
Dance is a language and I seem to always be in conversation. I find it easiest to talk with my body and my movement since I’m not always the best with words. I dance to communicate. To invite. To start a conversation.
”
On Father’s Day, the curtains ceremoniously parted at On the Boards to reveal a stage illuminated by a single shaft of light. Sides lay in the light crumpled, supine, her legs tucked underneath, pinned against the floorboards. A microphone dangled from a cord from the ceiling. Barely moving, she began to sing a dirge to her father, the lyrics inaudible. A projection of a star-pricked Milky Way gradually filled the space, stars swirling in a vortex over her head, growing liquid tails and slowly melting into the long, watery wisps of tears, semen, milk.
At the end of that 15-minute piece, Molly hunched over in a ball, rocking, lost in an impenetrable void, her graceful movements deteriorated to shuddering cascades of animal spasms. She falteringly tied on a gauzy white gown, then gummed her mouth with her fist, attempting to release a word—or song—that would not come. She called the piece “I once was my father.”
“
I want to invite people not necessarily into a sad world, but take them through the emotions with me. This is the world we’re all in.
”
The process of creating this piece in collaboration with Molly felt organic from the beginning. As I listened to her song I felt the intensity of her grief and pain. The slow build of the beginning into the deep elements where the beat hits and shatters your chest, the feeling was palpable.
As I listened to the song more the timbre felt of cool tones with moments of minimal warmth. The sharp and often visceral concept of the arrangement led me to want to approach the visuals in a more fluid way. Knowing Molly’s history and style of dance (she graduated from Cornish College of the Arts) I knew her movements would complement the visual work and the contrast of the song.
I experimented with various liquids and shot their reaction to each other using a macro lens attached to my Canon 5D. Hours of footage was captured, but it wasn’t until I started selecting and editing the videos to the song that I began to fully feel the surreal, messy, and calming pairing. It reminded me of the grief process and how many things can be true. You can feel deeply sad, yet relieved. Connected yet chaotic. Reminiscent yet a desire to move on. Guilty yet forgiving.
