Like the Sea

Carol Mavor is Professor Emeritus of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. Her books include Serendipity: The Afterlife of the Object (Reaktion Books, 2024) and Like a Lake: A Story of Uneasy Love and Photography (Fordham University Press, 2020).

• Preface xiiiI Like Mary Glass 1Dance Is Our First Art Form 2Under a Nearly Cloudless Sky 4A Caul Should Be Kept for Life 9The Defeated Owl Spirit 12Lake Tahoe Never Blinks 13Alone in the Shell 15Taking Three Hundred Years to Grow into an Oak Tree 19A Desire to Steal 21Like Anything That Feels Really, Really Good 25Until They Are Lost 28The Pacific Is Made of the Blues of Mary's Dream of a Glass House 34Like the Jellyfish That Wash Up on the Beach That She Sometimes Accidentally Steps On 35Fairytale Modernism 38Appetite 43We've Danced with Ruth and Merce on Anna's Redwood Deck 44At Last, They Come Out—Explosively but Gently 45Heart Beating under Bark 50Mary Does Not Love Aaron 54I Could See That They Were Running and Skipping and To Me It Was Dancing 56Her Voice Is Voluptuous, Almost Masculine 58Even Though She Is a Vegetarian 62My Excited Pupils Enlarged / M. XXX 64The Secret That Was Melody's Alone 67In You 69Honey from Mr. Larkin's Bees 70Like the Noses of Rabbits 71The Stars Are Aligned 72Eyes Washed in Tears 73Girlfriends Who Traveled to the Other Side 75Mary Cannot Imagine That It Is Anything Serious 80Imagination Is a Killer 82The Nature of Grief 84The Same Thing 85Mary's Companion Lover 88He Will Lose Nico 89Into Her Skirt Pocket 90To Wait Is to Love 92Like a Drug in Eliza's Veins 94Pulled Out by Coda's Hot Light 99To Eat Is to Steal 101To Love Is to Wait 104Dance That Is All 105Time to Dance 106A Scale Model of Vietnam 108To Nourish 109The Halprins Are Friends of Godunova 110And No Birds Sing 111A Big Newfoundland Dog Named Carlo 112Mother of Black Dance 114Big, Drooling, Shedding Beast 115The Same Deep Thought 117The Knitting Is So Tender 120Down Haight Street 121No Strings 122Yucatecos Like Me Speak Maya 127Visible Stars, Even When the Sun Is Up 132Something Begins 133Mary Sees a Baby's Face in the Waves 136Curved as a Dolphin Bone Held in the Sea 138Eliza Says Her Sorrow Is So Great That the Mountains Changed Places and Began to Leak Milk 139Ocean's Time 141Blood Everywhere 144Nothing Inside of Mary 145No Song 146Is This What You Wanted? 147That Dark Involvement with Blood and Birth and Death 148That White Feather Floating on Top of the Sea 149What Happened? 150Would Something Else Have Happened? 153Until It Dissolves in One's Mouth 154The Heart Is a Safe Place / Especially if It Belongs to a Beloved Sister 156As She Fingers the Breath Holes of the Abalone Shell Again 160And Someone Turned the Moon Off 162To Disappear 163Like the Sea 164Afterwor(l)d 167Acknowledgments 173Illustration Credits 175Notes 179

"It's tempting to say that I ‘inhaled’ Like the Sea, except that metaphor seems wrong regarding a work that's so fluid, so amniotic. And while there's been ample documentation of the lives and work of some of the most significant figures in postmodern dance, this ‘biography’ expands the possibilities for exploring the ways in which an aesthetic practice is grounded in both political and personal histories. Mavor's Mary Glass is an uncannily convincing participant in this sphere, and the places where her life and those of 'real people' intersect are both illuminating and enthralling." - Barbara Browning, author of The Gift.