Two good reasons to go to Velvet on a Thursday night

(September 15, 2008)

1. She is a compiler that reads the instructions encrypted in music and translates them into motion; bass and vocals become machine code for her body. When a song is composed in just the right way, she can feel where her limbs are meant to go: the notes insist on being plucked from the air, stroked, pulled inward, and devoured. Her palms and fingertips gather vibrations from the mouth of the singer or the speaker, depending on the day, and lead their arms over and around her in rhythms that she follows without effort. She can dance differently if she makes a conscious decision to do so, but it is like swimming against the current, her skin meeting unnecessary resistance with each twist.

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2. Every song has a sensuous texture, one which is usually best described with food metaphors: melted chocolate, half-baked bread, firm gelatin. When she hears a song, she feels its consistency; when she dances, she bathes herself in it, feeling it press against her skin in all directions. On special occasions, that texture becomes completely immersive and interactive, the music parting down the middle to grant her questing hands direct access to its innards. She scales notes and swings across the ties that connect them, sheltered from silence in the lee of the clef. Lost in a sea of delicious sensation, she is a marionette granted a soul, dancing to music that dances to her.