Pricilla Princess of the tall Grass Sea

Pricilla Pricilla
Standing in a field
Over grown and paint pealed

Pricilla Pricilla
No longer looking for love
But you were once

Pricilla Pricilla
You once sailed the world
A home for a restless boy

Pricilla Pricilla
He's long gone now
No one loves you anyhow

Pricilla Pricilla
Lonely in your tall grass sea
A home for the restless breeze

Pricilla Pricilla
You sail across my dreams
Like I never sailed you across the sea

Pricilla Pricilla
I'll come back to you
And know I'm home

Pricilla Pricilla
I'll be sad when you're gone

A speech for a Gala

Chicago is the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: The Odawa (oʊˈdɑːwə), Ojibwe (Ojibway) and Potawatomi Nations. Many other Tribes like the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee (muh·naa·muh·nee), Sac and Fox also called this area home.
Located at the intersection of several great waterways, the land naturally became a site of travel and healing for many Tribes.
We make this acknowledgement to bring awareness and understanding of the history of indigenous peoples and their territories, and as a call to rethink one’s own relationship with the city, the land and the environment.

I was thinking about this, I realized that all of my life I have lived by large bodies of water, an ocean, a river, a lake. And so too have I lived my whole life through dance – as I know many of you have –
And I think of dance and movement like water, we can cup it in our hands if only for a little while, hold it in containers to be used later, to satiate our thirst or wash ourselves clean. Water knows not about boarders, races, cultures, ethnicity, it is in all of us, it IS all of us. It gives itself to all things without distinction or judgement and settles into the smallest spaces with deliberation. It moves us by force, raising all, the cool stillness calms, and great waves carry us to where we never thought we would go.

This for me is dance, this for me is what we do, See Chicago Dance is the tide that rises all, we help you carry your audiences as if across oceans, or playfully across puddles. We fill your cup when needed through programs, services, advocacy and research.  - If the dance community are the ships we are the ocean that moves you forward.
We aim to fearlessly inspire this ever-growing inclusive community to share in, and spread the power of dance in Chicago. And our mission is to advocate for this field and strengthen the diverse range of dance organizations and artists By developing audiences while also creating a more cohesive dance community.  

We have had a year full of change and success with the 8^th annual Chicago Dance Month and the first ever Day of Dancer Heath, The third Summer Dance Village in Wrigley square and 2 Moving Dialog Events. Not forgetting to mention the many other programs and services we offer, like reviews, the dance floor, and online marketing assistance. For the coming year we hope to continue and expand these programs. 

Tonight we recognize two great people Amina and Lou who have given so much to our community, we celebrate them as we also celebrate this city’s vibrant dance ecosystem. I ask you all to help us nourish this waterway, and sustain the whole community.

The Poet

My lover is a closed book, begging to be opened wide and read aloud

Your skin an empty page upon which I write my desire

Written with the edge of my nail into your softness

My fingers dance in cursive text

Tracing lines that have been hidden from view

Inscribing my own in the margins of you

Saliva is my indelible ink tracing words of lust onto your skin

Writing lines of poetry with my tongue

Voraciously I will write you

Supping on the ink pressed from your pages

You taste like saltpeter and ash

I will discover your palimpsest secrets

As you gasp and sigh into me

Slowly I will tease out those hidden words

I have only begun the first page

I write your skin onto mine with fingers finding sticky pages pressed together

Filling my dictionary with your cries

Teasing with teeth and lips and tongue the sweet words you want release

I’ll write my name across your flesh in no words anyone but you and I can decipher

( to be read aloud as part of a performance)

The Cartographer

Finger tips gently glide over the frame of your face. Pulling you to me, my hands mold the lines of your nose and lips, the heels of my palms towards your eyes, fingers entwining your hair, grasping and pulling your head back to stretch the soft skin and expose your neck.

Breath gasps from your throat, suddenly tight and vulnerable, I have done nothing but expose a desire.
My hands release your hair and trail down to your neck,
circling, finger tips finding the hollow where your neck meets sternum.
Palms flat against your chest pinky to thumb, measuring and recording the breadth of your body from nipple to nipple, the length of your spine as I turn you to face the wall. 

Arms over head, palms flat, legs spread. 

I will press myself to you, gauging inch by inch breath by breath how my body lines to yours. 

I will measure you with the length of me. How we fit together, your back to my front, how our curves and creases meet bone and hard lines melts to soft.

I breathe you in, you smell like dove soap and winters cold.
I am taking my time cataloguing you. Call me a cartographer, for I shall map your every surface, inside and out, I will chart new pathways into you to find the hidden places where you didn’t know pleasure is found. 

My lips trace the ridges of your vertebrae and teeth sink to goose flesh raised waiting for my tongue to taste.

Arms circle, fingers playing the piano of your ribs.
Leaving red lines from my nails across the skin.
I will not play gently, but not so hard as to break. 

I can taste sweet tension, heat rising from your body in waves as my hand smacks against waiting skin, tight with sudden pain and heat, my lips caress the red raised palm print. 

I know you want to turn from the wall.

The rise and swell of your desire like tides across your body for me to sail, to conquer, I will ride your salty waters and deliver us safe to new shores.
Gently fingers lap at your firm flesh, teasing highwater, I will traverse your folds and waves until your lustful ocean breaks free.

I said stay still. 

Your breath ragged, like the rocky shore line, I will slide my body between the wall and you, bringing you to me, I wrap one leg around your hips, your hands still against the wall, I will pull you to me. 

And we bask in this estuary.

Call me Captain, for I have sailed these waters, bucking my body on your rough seas until the storm passed to lay calm and cool in this safe harbor.