Go Figure, created by Sharon Fridman. Featuring Schmuel Dvir Cohen, Tomer Navot, a mobility scooter, a pair of crutches, and an audience.

Haze, and a sound that opens wide like a yawn. Out of this yawn glides an electric scooter carrying a body. It circles the space like a ghost. Until meeting the floor the body curls and unfurls around the seat and the handles. Until joined by one other, this body is alone. This wide-open sound feels eternal until it’s not, and by that point we are hooked like their elbows on the crutch. Curious, this geometry of ways you wouldn’t normally hold a crutch unless you were trying to fall. Don’t fall, I think. Precarious balances render a body so precious: a jigsaw, a see-saw of lean and support.

We later ask Fridman about the risks of a fall. Are there plan Bs for somebody who uses crutches not just for stage but for sidewalk? But there are no plan Bs, just as there is no desire to mention the disability that exists here, albeit invisibly. So I mention the tight suits, the mosaic patterns, the tracing of forms out of the hazy backdrop, the drop of the crutch the clatter the catch of each-other, the reach grow stretch until collapse, once again, into each other. Not a fall, but maybe yes! a beautiful unintentional fall unafraid of the floor. And it is slow, this lean and support, and though I am not sure how these bodies feel give receive because these bodies are, like any at first meeting, new to me, I am learning as they speak.

And when one lifts the other and his knees begin to stutter, still there is no fall. Time is slowed to a pace mere inches from still. The sound like a yawn climbs towards its peak. But I should tell you: this is not a tired yawn, but an opening of space for ponder peace relief and the body is raised higher still, and his feet don’t touch the floor for what feels like days and in sudden golden light, we, the audience, bathe.

To return, he spirals down and around the torso of the other until his feet reach the floor, but perhaps my memory of this is flawed. I notice the scooter, still circling, almost hovering; the end is coming, of this I am sure. But now I realise: we have witnessed neither beginning nor end, but rather a moment captured and stretched apart so we might grasp who inhabits it, their nuances and fears. And this moment, their process, will continue to roll forwards spread outwards, as it has for years. This slowness is space for something unspoken and sublime, it is far from simple, but we’re granted the time to let it land. A gift.

And so one mounts the scooter, soon followed by the other and they glide away, swallowed by the haze. Silence descends but in me, something loud remains.