Prince of Smoke

This is a dance about the god Maya.
(This is about daydreams, about an ephemeral prince made only of smoke.)
There is a boy surveying the land.
The lines that are being surveyed by the boy enter the boy’s body
and accumulates inside his body as a bundle of thin lines.
Those lines become very thin, like lines of light.

The lines transform themselves into a leopard made only of light on its back,
like the painting by Toyen.
(The leopard has a heavy face.
It is aware of the shadows that envelop his belly,
in contrast to the light shining on its back.)

The leopard then becomes a peacock only made of nerves,
and then suddenly transforms back into the original leopard. The leopard,
as if standing up in the form of the peacock,
finds he has become the prince of Maya.
The prince of Maya, using the joints of his arms and legs,
retreats into the background.
He then stops. Suddenly he transforms himself
into several women made only of blue smoke.
(The prince is only dreaming about these women.)
The prince slowly starts squatting.
He then reverts to the form of the prince of Maya.
He is suddenly aware of a crown on his head.
The threads being pulled by his fingers are suddenly cut.
The moment the pieces of thread are cut, there is a rooster’s crest on his head.

There are two lines of thread, made of nerves,
that grow out from behind his ears, straight into space.
The lines become three costumes, like in the painting by Marie Toyen.

A heavy neck and heavy piece of flesh appear
inside the vacuum of the three costumes made of light.
The weight sinks the thing down,
now made only of a heavy neck and heavy flesh.
Beneath this heavy thing, a flower blooms.
Two nerves grow out of the flower, splits in the middle,
and become like the Yajirobei Japanese balancing toy.
The entire body, all flowers, all balancing toy,
all flesh and neck, are now being plastered into a wall.
The plastered thing is transformed into a crow in the snow,
like in the drawing by Buson Yosa.

The second crow becomes an entirely different crow.
The second crow becomes trapped in darkness
as depicted in a painting of darkness by Francisco Goya.
When the crow steps out of this darkness,
it has become a stuffed crow.
The stuffed crow melts into the air
and finally becomes something much like the air into which it dissolves.
Finally, it becomes that very air which has dissolved it.