“Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

TRACKING PARALLEL

Part one: Rupture
Part two: Days of Awe
Part three: Suspended

Lives track parallel across time and space.
People track parallel with their own circumstances, other’s circumstances and the world’s circumstances.
Protons, each spinning alone, can be drawn into alignment, tracking parallel in the magnetic stillness of an MRI.

TRACKING PARALLEL is the live evening-length dance part of WHAT IS ESSENTIAL.

Central to TRACKING PARALLEL is the inclusion of long-time collaborators, both disabled and non-disabled, including veteran HLD dancers Jillian Hollis, Jeffrey Freeze, Nathan Trice, Leslie Taub, Nico Gonzales, Roxanne Young, Henry Holmes and Meredith Fages, composers Ximena Borges, Randall Woolf, Ainesh Madan, Marty Beller, and Chris Brierley and the creative team of Robert Wierzel and Janet Wong.

TRACKING PARALLEL is not sentimental but haunting; fractured; repetitive; a journey going nowhere but here. The cast of nine embodies the unpredictability of life and our attempts to impose order within the chaos.

“TRACKING PARALLEL’s genesis lies in the 55-year gap between my mother’s brain tumor surgery at age 33 and my surgery in January 2024.. But TRACKING PARALLEL is not about illness or disability but rather about the universal experience of dealing with upheaval in our lives. It is about letting go because we have to, and letting go because we want to; about never touching in our separate journeys but intermittently connecting very intimately. Amid the chaos we aim to create beauty, not in spite of it, but because of it.

The score, which I have created, reflects the many layers of the work. At its foundation are the sounds of an MRI machine. That machine analyzes the body by forcing the protons to track parallel so that as they enter into a state of “relaxation” that amount of time to get there reveals if there is disease in the tissues. But to me the MRI represents most importantly a point of discovery and change. The score weaves in beautiful music composed over the years for me. A looking back to move forward.

Rupture marks the personal in a solo for Nathan Trice that then transitions into Days of Awe -a more collective experience of loss, the desire to move forward and our need for connection; all within a surreal introspective environment. The title Days of Awe comes from the 10 days in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when Jews are invited to reflect, repent and seek and give forgiveness. Suspended will be explosive within thecontemplative space adding the sense of unknowing to the yearning for potentially dangerous intimacy.”

- Heidi Latsky

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This work was made possible by the generous support of Jody and John Arnhold; 92NY; Harkness Foundation for Dance; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Heidi Latsky Dance is a 2025 NDP Finalist Grant Award recipient. Support was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation in support of TRACKING PARALLEL and to address continued sustainability needs.

TRACKING PARALLEL (part of the WHAT IS ESSENTIAL project) also received support from the Joyce Theater’s Executive Director’s Fund for New Work; and individual donors Aerin Benevides; Eve Mykytyn, Margot Steinberg and Donna Fish.