Me and My Shadow

I remember that my mom taught me how to dance along to this song, "Me and My Shadow," when I was a little girl. We'd sing and laugh, and I always felt as though I really could be her shadow. Shadow dancing, like mirror dancing, is such a great way to learn how to feel closer to another person. Two people can have so much fun playing together, taking turns both leading and following. Partners can take it nice and easy or cut loose a little. With practice, one can learn how to follow flights of fancy or tricky tempo shifts. What a valuable life skill to learn how to synchronize your movements and align your rhythms with others.



Today, artists with completely different processes are encouraged to find new ways to collaborate, in hopes of sparking innovative new ideas.

The renowned dance theater troupe Pilobolus recently collaborated with Pulitzer-Prize winning comic artist Art Spiegelman on a new dance involving shadowplay and the history of the comics. "Hapless Hooligan in 'Still Moving'" premiered this week at Dartmouth. Change partners and dance with someone new, and who knows what might happen? Spiegelman wryly jokes, "They haven’t done this before, I haven’t done this before, and that’s why I’m just glad that they talked me into it, even if I have to change my name after it appears onstage and start life over under a cartoonists protection program."
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2010/06/20/pilobolus_draws_on_new_medium/



When approached by Pilobolus, Spiegelman was not particularly knowledgeable about dance, but he was interested in the prospects of the partnership. “One thing that was really interesting was they just seemed a lot more upbeat and positive than me... So instead of sitting around talking about the end of the world and how everything’s a giant oil slick, we were going, ‘Oh, isn’t this beautiful.’ The author, renowned for his graphic novels about the Holocaust, Maus, and the events of September 11th, In The Shadow of No Towers, accepted the invitation to the dance thinking, “maybe they’d be a good influence."

Me and my shadow
Strolling down the avenue
Me and my shadow
Not a soul to tell our troubles to

And when it's twelve o'clock
We climb the stair
We never knock
For nobody's there

Just me and my shadow
All alone and feeling blue

Me and My Shadow
Words by Billy Rose
Music by Al Jolson & Dave Dreyer