<Begin Segment 40>

SY: Much of your choreography's been inspired by feelings and emotions. What else would you say influences your choreography?

MN: Oh, my love for my home, that I didn't realize how much meant to me until the property was sold. But while I was still living there, I choreographed two pieces. One was called "Transit into Dormancy," and it was about the effects of winter weather on vegetation. And this property had lots of beautiful maples that turned to gold and red and yellow, and then they would fall. And then the willow tree had all these leaves that would fall. So it was a dance that had falls and resistance to falls. But in the end it, one last fall. But it was done with the idea that they're going into dormancy and that spring will bring back a new life. So it wasn't, it wasn't death, but it was a very down, down-type dance.

SY: Modern dance --

MN: And then the other dance related to my home was called "Water Images," and it was based on the creek that (...) ran through the yard from the very first, it was bought. It's now officially called Willow Creek. But it was pure water, and you could look down and you could see salamanders and eels and crawdads. And on top there's little skippers skipping around, and little blue flies and, like dragonflies, I guess, and butterflies (...) and watercress, and all these wonderful things about the stream. Then we'd wade in it, and we'd make a little dams. (...) And so I did this dance called "Water Images", and it was based on all these little things, little pebbles and birds and all those things. And this is a dance that I did in collaboration with Channel 9. I had done a movie of, let's see, four of my dances with Raring Film Company. And the fella that came and watched the dance, he went out of town, so he left it up to somebody else. And this other guy, he was not interested in the dance, he was interested in the girls. So it was heartbreaking because he didn't capture a lot of things, and he missed a lot of (dance) that he should have gotten. So Ron Ciro at Channel 9, he says, "Well, why don't you come over and we'll make a film together?"

[Interruption]

MN: He invited me to come over. I had this piece of music that had several short pieces on it. My accompanist sent it to me from France, and it was either eighteen seconds long or thirty-eight seconds long or twenty seconds. Anyway, so I made an image for each one of those pieces of music and in between, the cameraman had, well, he had two pools of light about eight feet in diameter. And there'd be one image in one pool, and then while that was being filmed, another group would be in the other pool. And in between, this poet would recite a line of his poetry and it was a beautiful poem. I never realized how beautiful it was, until I read the whole thing together. And then, he moved to the next pool of light, and then he'd move back. And he, Ron Ciro, also sent one of his fellows down to the canal to get some water filmed. So he filmed a whole bunch of water and then he told me to fit (...) film onto the image, because some images needed a rippling and some needed a flat, still water. (...) So it became a mixed-media film. It had dance, it had music, it had poetry, it had the camera, and it had film of water. So we filmed it at Channel 9. And the poet said he didn't want any "damn dancers" dancing on his poetry, so (I) had to (record) the lines of poetry between the images. He finally came to see it filmed. And he saw the run-through, and he was quite impressed and he says, "I think I'll have my name put on there." So his name (...) is printed differently. Somebody (added) his name (to) the credits. And then we all went out and had Chinese dinner afterwards. [Laughs]

SY: Sounds like fun.

[Interruption]

SY: At the time that you were doing Water Images, had you ever seen a film where, which incorporated poetry and music and dance before?

MN: No, I hadn't. It just evolved. And it didn't dawn on me until after it was all done that it was a mixed-media and it incorporated a lot of different art forms.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.