1986 – Still Crossing

I had just finished making the dance Russia: Footnotes to History – and that was the first time I had made something really big, made it wrong, thrown out half of it, re-done it…it took three years. The final installment was a fine piece of work. My father came to see the piece when it toured to California and afterwards he said to me backstage, “You should know that your grandfather escaped conscription in the Russian Army, walked across Russia and made it to America.” So when the commission came from Dancing in the Streets to make something commemorating the Statue of Liberty, this little story from my dad came instantly to mind. The old people rolling slowly across the stage in the opening of Still Crossing are, to me, the ghosts of my grandfather – all those immigrants present in each of our imaginations.