"the imperative of performance" by Nora Raine Thompson

These poems are an artifact of my long-time tradition of writing immediately after I see dance performances, usually on my phone, in my notes app. This practice began as a way to simply take notes, write down what I recalled. But I soon realized that note-taking isn’t so far from writing poetry. I began to edit and shape the notes more, and share them (now, on my substack, “engaged to dance”). 

This selection contains reflections from five performances I saw in the last year, chosen because of the way they all made me want (need) to write. 

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evan ray suzuki’s plot hole, Brooklyn NY (November 6, 2025)

Spring break has a psychotic break
The whispers behind your bikini
Are the dead globs behind the plastic shell of bubblegum vape
Soap leaking into its own lid
Feet falling out their own silver encasings

Grow an arm out your ass
And a lamp out your hole
And look at me lose my mind
Wet around the eyes
Look at the sound not touching the song not touching the shining face mooned face mirror my
face huh?

To have a pop song fucked by butoh???
This is where we live, no doubt about it


Kashia Kancey’s The Closties Variety Hour, Brooklyn, NY (January 12, 2026)

Wake up, we’re gonna start
Welcome to four fast false starts
Welcome to the characters, the glitch stars, the holders of my blink, the holy spotlit bars, the
nightmares and the real friends, the curtain pullers and the legs, the church and the misdirect
Pull back the curtain for murder but the funny kind, betrayal but as victory lullaby, sirens, sirens,
the sexy kind, bunny, cake, wine, where indulgence rests, tries

I want a house, that’s it, I want everything, that’s it

Alone, singing, ignoring the pounding on the door (“I must leave”)
Alone, screaming body, monologuing on the floor (“I know everything”)

Melancholy electrified, joy injected with terror and terror injected with love, fear indistinguishable
from desire, and nothing less than life insisting on its enormity, swelling absurdity, glistening
teeming laughing boom


Fenia Kotsopoulou, London, UK (March 15, 2026)

A slow reveal in the window and a slow drip of liquid
Makes us wait
Imagining (imagination is the imperative of performance) how slow the effects of the stupidly
fast bombs can be
Where ash is settled, blood can draw
Draws a pointilism hieroglyph, body ink on body paper in body language
A slow peel, harmless really, but grotesque
Feeling the pull of skin from skin (sensation is the imperative of performance)
Pointing to over there, where this aftermath isn’t done yet
Light streaming through here, where the aftermath can only be uttered through voice notes from
there, piped through a speaker under the stairs

Here, only quiet cold orange tinged seeping wounds


Sonya Molansky’s Service Positions, Brooklyn, NY (May 29, 2026)

What might the psyche produce
On the other half of the conversation
Without vision?

                    Color, bright, memory
                Intimacy, wherever it occurs
               The erect beads of grippy socks
                The desire of the driverless
   The tender customer, before their end, between your legs
        Your dad, singing, in the back of the restaurant
                        Your dad, dying
                    The afterlife, a beach
                 Your picture, buried in sand

Nothing changes: feet remain
But nothing stays: feet retract
Everything matters: rope, pencil, plant, phone, toe
Everything is matter: your brain is wet, aching for image


Jade Manns’ Falling, Brooklyn, NY (May 16, 2026)

Peeling a lemon
You burst
Birthing, tearing
Birthing, stretched
Starting by shedding
In all instincts’ force
There is no dignity
Or there is, but it’s at the bottom
But who needs it
When you’re at the mercy of tickling
Not far from pain
When you’re at the mercy of what you have to do
What is next, destined
What a body can take
What I can take, watching
Manufactured
You fall
Towards the end of the world
In response to the smell of danger
You hear her accent, when she calls (nature)
And we look down to work
And we look up to be the animals we are
And we look in the mirror