To a full house in the Bethesda, Maryland Writer’s Center Reading Room on April 17, 2024, Diana Tokaji explored through dance, poetry, and music how to fly despite obstacles. The Dresser noted that the obstacles included a tremor in her hands, vocal issues, and the loss of a dance partner through A.I.D.S. What shone through was an indomitable spirit with the ability to literally move her audience in a very well thought out and engaging program.
Twelve pieces divided in three sections comprised Mad Gravel & Other Life Stories, an hour-long program. “Limping Dance with Ripe Persimmon” provided an upfront confession of onset disabilities though not all, like limping and stuttering were personal disabilities. Using a colorful flowing scarf, the dancer demonstrated her ability to flow and move gracefully though there are moments like limping and shaking that interrupt.
Her introduction to “In the Hut” revealed to the audience that the repetitious poetry of this piece was detrimental to her voice, so she was going to cut it from the program. However, people around her raised a clamor, so she enlisted her Artistic Assistant Margaret Riddle to recite the poetry while sitting on a stool as she, the dancer, stood behind and used her arms to sculpt the dance.
The next several pieces brought birds and trees into view. She asked the audience to picture themselves as a tree and to tell a nearby seatmate what tree. Then she asked everyone who was able to stand up, to cross their limbs with their seatmates, to sway and to feel the sun shining on them. She said (and maybe this was part of a poem) “these woods are improv.” Whether this was a particularly sympathetic audience or her ability to engage is just that powerful, most people in the room readily complied, including the Dresser who has a deep-seated love of trees.
The second section dealt with the importance of “small moments,” a “Loss of Words,” and what activities were still negotiable—“Are You Still XYZ?” The XYZ potently refers to dance (among other things)—Are you still dancing? The answer comes in a video within a video. Tokaji is shown dancing with both her dance partners: Linda Ellis Rawlings who is in the main video with Tokaji and Daryl Lloyd who is in a projected video behind them. Lloyd is the partner who died of A.I.D.S.
The last section gets the audience involved again as she asks everyone to consider what they would bring in a small boat as part of her presentation of “Poem of Trust. Poem of Fearless.” Then she presented a taste of her dance opera Mad Gravel and her poem “Post-Assault Prescription When I Fear My Spirit Dying.” This is the poem which was published by Washington, DC’s Split This Rock poetry festival and which was dedicated to Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, the poem profoundly looks at what the dancer is capable of as she strives for justice that may never be achieved:
Post-Assault Prescription When I Fear My Spirit Dying [excerpt]
Here in the mud
of my history
beneath the rage
is counsel.
Where grace
expands like the air
under a bird’s wings
all day it seems,
rising
soaring
gliding.
Willingness
to take the air
and ride it
is grace.
Riding,
being lifted
by air
is grace.
I seek grace now
as my rage deepens
exponentially
to hate.
As I see my own dreams –
the day ones
the night –
and witness my capacity
to do to another
real harm.
I return to silence
I am not saying
it is easy.
I return to silence
I am not saying
I will be quiet.
I return to silence
I am not saying
I won’t shout my grief
from the rooftops.
Photos by Angelique Raptakis
