Except in my imagination, I don’t pretend to understand the permanent blackness of those who have lost their sight. Even less, those who were born without that faculty, and so have no access to even the memory of color: to sense red, they must feel red on their skin, the subtle variation in frequency from one hue to the next.

In the landscape of the never-sighted, I imagine certain words lose their texture, deprived as they are of connotation. When I say “red”, I see flowers; I see blood; I smell the perfume of a rose, or feel my pulse quicken with desire, or deflate in despair; I see a red balloon, recall a single frame from a French film; I smell the stink of post-War fear, I hear the ruffle of Chinese banners over some Premier’s visit to Harvard Square; I see her body where it blushes with life, and from that color, her scent.

For me, Contact Improvisation as a dance form isn’t concerned with how it looks to move – en pointe, arabesque, step step turn! – but how it feels to move. It is not about the surfaces of the body in movement, but the spirit that moves the body, as though under the skin and behind the ribs you could watch the heart beating toward and away, opening and closing, rising and falling to the earth, while the limbs and the torso follow that sprite where its delight might take it.

Recently someone asked me about the form of dance I practice – the form I aspire to, really; and like all good forms it is small enough for me to wrap my arms around, large enough to contain my curiosity, lean enough that an evening costs a few dollars and yields a fortune, full enough that I think I will never find the end of it.

I talked about the improvisational “jam”, the coalescence of a couple of dozen movement artists, with no talking, no music, only the sound of sliding or shuffling, running or slowing feet, deep breath… sometimes spontaneous laughter, sometimes spontaneous stillness, deeper because it is shared. My friend tried to imagine that space for a moment, as much as one can really imagine it, foreign as it is, and asked “How can you dance without music?”

I returned late last night from the annual Dance New England summer camp near Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire, and woke this morning with dancing tape still on a couple of toes, the echo of taut and trained muscle still in the sinews, and the ache of separation from that vibrant and affectionate community of dancers already wringing out some sighs.

A beautiful family event that has been going on for some 30 years, DNE Camp attracts top-quality teachers and chefs and musicians from all over, offering the best of what they have to upwards of 800 participants. The cost of classes, food and lodging is all part of the modest fee. This year, like most years, there were community elders in attendance, and adults who at one time were babies born to this once-a-year village; there were newly-inspired youth from all over the States and abroad; and toddlers to teens who arrived with their parents for this summertime camp.

The effort it takes to communicate with words…

A single picture is worth a thousand of them; and a single touch is worth a thousand pictures. If we have practiced all with good attention, then words become the lowest form of communication, they are heart and mind thrown at a distance to perhaps be caught, perhaps be dropped: certainly they paint only one-thousandth of a picture, or one millionth of a touch.