30 minute read
We’re Builders, We’re Makers
by SDC Journal
AN SDC ROUNDTABLE
MODERATED BY KITTY McNAMEE
Earlier this year, SDC Journal brought together a stellar group of choreographers with one foot—as it were—in concert/company work, and one foot in musical theatre/Broadway. Moderator Kitty McNamee began the conversation by asking everyone about their backgrounds and the trajectories of their professional lives.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Ayodele Casel, a Doris Duke Artist, is an award-winning and critically acclaimed tap dancer and choreographer. Born in The Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, her practice centers highly narrative works rooted in expressions of selfhood, culture, and legacy. She serves as tap choreographer for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl, which garnered her a 2022 Drama Desk nomination.
Michelle Dorrance is a NYC-based tap dancer and the founder/Artistic Director of Dorrance Dance. Choreographic commissions include: Martha Graham, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Center, Works & Process, and her choreographic Broadway debut, Flying Over Sunset. MacArthur Fellow, Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, Doris Duke Artist, Princess Grace, Alpert Award, and Bessie Award winner.
Daniel Ezralow, an artistic director, choreographer, writer, and performer, has made a career expanding the boundaries of dance; he is known for his work in theatre, film, opera, and television. Honors include two American Choreography Awards, Choreographic Media Honors Award, an Emmy Award and nomination, Premio Positano (Italy), Nijinsky Award, Ischia Award, NEA Choreographic Fellowship, and McCallum Theatre Choreographic lifetime achievement award.
Kitty McNamee is an artist, a creator and, most importantly, a collaborator. Spanning genres, Kitty’s passion for the human heart, psychology and storytelling fuels her work with non-dancers and dancers alike. Her directorial work is infused with this same kinetic wonder. Her dance films have screened at over 50 festivals worldwide.
David Neumann works across many disciplines including film, television, opera, and musicals. As Artistic Director of Advanced Beginner Group, Neumann creates nationally recognized original work for the stage. His many awards include: Hadestown: 2019 Chita Rivera Award, 2019 Tony nomination, and 2022 LA Drama Critics Circle Award. For ABG: three NY Dance and Performance Bessie Awards.
DAVID NEUMANN | I started downtown—way, way, way downtown—doing concert dance and experimental theatre at venues like The Kitchen, P.S. 122, et cetera, et cetera. Concurrently, I was working in the theatre, mostly at Soho Rep and New York Theatre Workshop, those kinds of spaces, and then I started to branch out and get into musicals. And now I’m working on musicals that are headed towards Broadway, and I’m working on films, and I’m still doing the downtown work as I can. And so here we are.
MICHELLE DORRANCE | I’m a tap dancer first and foremost. Ayodele and I could both speak to this, but tap dance lives in a space in our tradition that is not entirely embraced by the theatre or the concert dance world, at least the legacy that we’re part of. I came up in tap dance in the early 1990s, which was during a renaissance and resurgence and a point at which folks were being gathered together, including the last elders of the jazz era. Savion Glover creating Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk [with George C. Wolfe] and choreographing that work was a huge push for the legacy we believed in entering the theatrical space. And there were, of course, a number of companies that were pushing into the concert-dance space, but they didn’t seem to have the same respect or staying power that one would hope.
I grew up watching dance at ADF [American Dance Festival] because my mom was a professional ballet dancer. As a young dancer, I understood the canon of ballet and classical forms in the country, but I fell deeply in love with tap dance at age seven. I vividly remember an evening with tap dance in it at the American Dance Festival that blew my mind. It was 1992, I was 12, and the evening included Savion Glover, “Buster” Brown, and “Sandman” Sims. The second act was [with flamenco dancer] José Greco II, and they ended with a big flamenco-tap dance off.
When I was given an opportunity in 2011 to present at Danspace Project and share an evening with Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, another peer of Ayodele’s and mine, I realized it was an opportunity to show how expansive the form is. I made the choice to honor the tradition and also kind of step outside the bounds a little bit; that was the beginning of making a choice to engage with concert work. When I had a conversation with James Lapine about Flying Over Sunset, he said, “When I saw your work, I thought you were a choreographer who could create something that had to do with LSD.” That’s how I stepped in a more formal way into the theatre world.
AYODELE CASEL | Hi Michelle. Hi everybody. I’m Ayodele Casel. I actually came into tap dancing as an actor. I was an acting major at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, in pursuit of being a film and television actor, and I got the opportunity in my sophomore year to take my first tap class. My interest had already been piqued because of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, seeing tap in the way it had existed on the screen. I happened to be at NYU in the mid-’90s, when there was a resurgence, as Michelle said, of young people tap dancing—young people of color and Black men in particular. I remember going to The Public Theater and seeing Noise/Funk and recognizing that there was a space for people who looked like me to do this art form that I had only seen Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell and Gene Kelly and Ruby Keeler and Ann Miller and so on and so forth doing. And then, of course, learning about the depth of the form and how deeply rooted it was in African culture and Black American culture kept me involved for the rest of my life.
I do not have a dance company, though I do dance with, if I had to say, a “pickup” company of dancers that I work with very consistently for concert work. I have worked primarily as a soloist, as a performer, and I have enjoyed a great career and also being in other folks’ companies and, of course, in my own practice. To fast-forward to where tap dancing and theatre connect again for me— there was Gregory Hines in Jelly’s Last Jam and all of the ways that he brought his tap dance artistry to the theatrical world. There was Henry LeTang [choreographer of Eubie!, Sophisticated Ladies, and Black and Blue] and the way those shows took up that space so beautifully and so authentically on the Broadway stage.
For me, the leap back to tap dancing and theatre was twofold. One, it was my own desire to marry my creative expression as an actor and storyteller with my tap-dancing skills. That was one personal pursuit. In 2016, I did a piece called “While I Have the Floor” at City Center for Jeanine Tesori’s Jamboree, which was directed by Michael Mayer. From that, Leigh Silverman, another wonderful director, invited me to choreograph Really Rosie for Encores! Off-Center the following year. By then, Michael and I had become pretty friendly, so when Funny Girl came on the table, he said, “I have an idea. The choreographer [Ellenore Scott] doesn’t tap dance, but I would love for you to do the tap choreography.” And so that’s how my return to theatre has developed and where it lives right now.
"[Noise/Funk] was a huge push for the legacy we believed in entering the theatrical space." —Michelle Dorrance
DANIEL EZRALOW | I was a pre-med at Berkeley—had never taken a dance class in my life—when I took a Martha Graham dance class with David Wood from the Graham Company [and founder of the dance program at the University of California at Berkeley]. It was hard, and I kind of fell in love with it. A couple of years later I found myself in New York City thinking, “Forget about pre-med, what the hell is this thing called dance and why do people do it?” I ended up finding my way to a little dance company called 5X2 Plus, then into Lar Lubovitch, and finally into Paul Taylor, where I found a bit of a home for three years, but I don’t have much zitsfleysh—that’s a Yiddish word for “sitting flesh” [the ability to sit for a long period of time]. I kind of move around a lot.
I was into dance; I didn’t want to be a choreographer. But I realized that the ways that they were expressing dance in New York City weren’t the only ways, so Moses Pendleton [founder of MOMIX] and I decided to go off into the country and run around in the woods. This was before you guys of the MTV world were born, and dance was making its way into rock and roll. We ended up working with Bowie and U2. Things exploded in a way that was interesting because dance became not just functional on the stage for its own purpose, but it became a server for others in other forms.
I paid my dues with Hubbard Street Dance and Batsheva Dance Company, but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. I dabbled in film; I actually acted in movies in Italy with some big directors because they saw dance as a part of their thing, and I became this dancing character actor. I met Julie Taymor when she was a mask maker, and we had a very strong connection as friends. We ended up working together on operas, on movies, on Broadway, and various things. And then I got into ceremonies, like the Olympics and expos.
After all this time, the only question I have is: Why? “Why” meaning: What’s next? Why are we doing this? Do we express it because we believe dance is a language in itself and it needs no other collaboration? Or do we express it in the form of musical theatre or a Broadway piece or a movie as a coinhabitant with the drama and the visuals and the music? These are all questions. I think, ultimately, we just have to keep making, we have to keep creating. We have to keep our bodies and our souls creative.
Once in a while, I put together a little dance company, like Ayodele said, sort of a pickup thing, just because I’m thirsty for getting back to a stage where it’s just watching movement and understanding what is this neuron mirroring that I’m getting that’s affecting my body. And then I’ll say, okay, I’m done with that. I’m kind of okay where I arrive, I have no idea where I’m going next. I like building decks, and I like a chainsaw.
AYODELE | I would like to do that with you. I did my whole backyard by myself, it’s fantastic.
DANIEL | It’s so hard doing it alone.
AYODELE | It’s therapeutic.
MICHELLE | I’m with you both. When I lived in a mechanic’s garage—this is 15 years ago—I finally learned how to put up drywall. It was one of my favorite times of my life— there were rats in the place, it was 400 bucks a month; it was awesome. I’ve never been more grateful for learning anything, because since then, I’ve built people beds and lofts and sets for my company because we have no money. You have to do it yourself. We’re all carpenters.
DAVID | I built a shed.
KITTY McNAMEE | We’re builders, we’re makers.
AYODELE | My landscaping company will be called Tap That Grass.
KITTY | I’m not handy. But I think something that we all have in common is this drive to make and to do it yourself and be a little on the punk side of things where you just have to make do with what you have.
My next question is: Who inspired you or gave you the vision that this world could be possible? For me, it was a weird mix of reading about Martha Graham and looking at photographs of dancers, watching old movies, and seeing Bob Fosse films. David, is there a person or a combination of people where you saw their work and you thought, “This is possible for me, too?”
DAVID | I had an unusual background in that I grew up in the experimental theatre. I was watching The Wooster Group and Mabou Mines and Richard Foreman and all that New York kind of scene. But at the same time, I grew up in suburbia, so I was watching MTV and Soul Train, and also Jackie Chan films. I would say it was a combination of Michael Jackson, Freddie “Rerun” Stubbs, Jackie Chan, and the experimental theatre folks. That mixture of influences was my first love and my exposure to making art; there was a lot of permission in terms of what one considered art making.
I came to dance a little bit later, concert dance formally, maybe like Daniel, too. But I think it was learning how to do early versions of popping and locking and that stuff, sitting in front of my TV, that started the DIY thing. It’s just sort of putting it together. You assemble these influences, feeling it in your body, and that’s what eventually turned into dance making. I didn’t really dance formally till college and after college, and then it just took off from there. That was the art form I really responded to the most.
KITTY | It’s interesting because I think there is a mindset that says TV is bad, media is not as good as live. For many of us, certainly for me, growing up in the country, I couldn’t see live theatre. Everything I saw was on TV.
DAVID | It’s the original YouTube.
KITTY | Michelle, you started dancing really early. Do you have flickers of what made you think, “Oh, as a choreographer, I could follow that. I can see a way in through that?”
MICHELLE | I have two very different branches of influence. One is my childhood mentor in North Carolina, where I grew up; his name is Gene Medler [founder of the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble and director of the NC Rhythm Tap Festival]. Gene brought the young people he was teaching to meet the elders of tap dance, so we were part of understanding the great depth of tap dance as a legacy that illustrated the history of America in both its darkest corners and also its most transcendent. Everyone was so generous. I met “Buster” Brown when I was 13. “Peg Leg” Bates would just sit and talk with you for hours. Both of the Nicholas Brothers, the folks that we saw in movies. It was insane.
The other thing I can say is that I loved live music. Chapel Hill had a huge indie scene when the indie scene was developing. On MTV, I was obsessed with the Chili Peppers and early Pearl Jam and Nirvana. But also, of course, as a young person I would smoke pot and fall asleep to the Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane album. I was also a huge bluegrass fan; there are just so many different forms, and eventually I fell in love with the blues.
I feel really lucky to have grown up in the music community that I grew up in, with music and indie films—not to mention the golden era of hip-hop dance, which also has a deep relationship to the footwork in tap dance. There was so much that intersected that made me curious about the larger world—and, of course, the very African diasporic world of the intersections of these dances. They were the only ones that felt good in my body, because I was terrible at classical forms.
Tap dance is the reason vernacular jazz exists. The first time I saw house dance as a teenager, I was like, “They’re fake tap dancing. What are they even doing?” I didn’t know what they were up to. And then I realized it was West African and it all resonated. This is what our culture actually is. Academically, I went to NYU Gallatin where you create your own major. I was really curious about the way tap dance was the vehicle through which the American story is told in its really true form; that we don’t talk about minstrelsy as a cornerstone of American culture is insane. Everyone should acknowledge what a lot of our larger culture comes from and how much oppression exists, and how Black forms of resistance are the reason there is a triumph and benevolent energy. Otherwise, this is a horror of a country.
AYODELE | I know everybody talks about diversity, equity, and inclusion right now, but when I was a young person in the ’90s, those words were not circulating. I was one of two Black people in my NYU class at Strasberg. The material I was given was what we consider standard classic American plays— we did Tennessee Williams and Ibsen. And I remember feeling like nobody’s going to cast me because there was no representation. The first time I thought that it would be possible for me in the theatre world was when I saw a poster for Rent in the subway, and I saw Daphne Rubin-Vega and thought, “She looks like me.” That was the first time that I thought, oh wow, there’s somebody who’s doing this that looks like me in this theatrical space.
The second time I thought it was possible was when I saw Savion Glover and those other young men in Noise/Funk. Up until that point, people would constantly compare me to Rosie Perez. We don’t look alike at all, but there was no reference. I think it’s really important to point out, because, in a way, you have [to make] something happen against all odds and against everything that you think is possible.
When you finally do see yourself as it relates to your color and your ethnicity, and then they’re all men, then it’s like, well, where’s the space for me there? But I think perseverance gets you through. Once I educated myself about what was possible within the art form, I understood that it was beyond just what I had seen from on the silver screen. I knew about Gregory Hines and the Nicholas Brothers and Bill Robinson. That was the blueprint, and I knew that we belong here.
Not only do we belong here, but like you said, Michelle, when you talk about minstrelsy—let’s talk about minstrelsy and vaudeville and those beginnings of theatre and the appropriation of our communities. And when I say “our,” I mean the Black communities and dance and appropriating those into performance, and then us not being able to do them and not being invited back into the space. I feel like now understanding context is so important— historical context. And it makes me feel like, yeah, we belong here. It makes sense to me that tap dancing is happening again in this way in theatre again, because it’s where we belong all the time.
DANIEL | I’m constantly searching for my voice. I’m constantly searching for the singular voice against the mass that wants to squish me down. As artists, you have to just keep searching for your voice. What is it that you need to say?
What I have found is the great inspiration for me didn’t come from dancers, it came from other fields. The inspiration came from people, really great people, at the top of their field, who were so simple and yet so profound that when I asked them a question they would answer and there was no attitude, no hierarchy, no I’m this or that. In fact, the people I met in the dance world, on Broadway, in movies—I hate to say it, but there’s a power thing. The #MeToo movement in a way broke out the whole concept of the power struggle; now it’s the people who want to be in power. Ultimately for me, it’s constantly searching for creative people that speak their voice. I respond to that creative urge.
Ayodele, what you just said about how you broke through is really—it’s inspiring to me, because that’s the same thing we all fight for in our own little way. It’s less obvious in some ways, but you all break through to share your voice. And at the end, “why” is the big question—why you have this urge, why you have this need. I mean, building decks is easier.
"Ultimately, we just have to keep making, we have to keep creating." —Daniel Ezralow
AYODELE | If I could just respond to that really quickly. There is the personal pursuit of seeking your authentic expression, and that journey is universal. What I was referring to before is that it does matter as it relates to who gets to do that. Who gets the opportunity to fully do that with support and representation is important. And so, for me, and I’m sure for a lot of people of color, if you don’t see it—it’s like, you have to see it to be it, right? And if that’s being suppressed, if that’s being oppressed, if people are gatekeeping those opportunities from you specifically, then it makes it infinitely harder, because it’s already hard to find your artistic voice, period, as a human being. It does make it harder when those opportunities are being given to folks that don’t look like you.
DANIEL | I totally agree.
MICHELLE | I was just going to say Ayo—I’m sure I said this to you a billion years ago, but I would love for the world to know— seeing you dance with Savion was a huge inspiration to me and all of the women who are younger than you, and probably the same age as you as well. [Editor’s Note: Ayodele was the first female tap dancer in Savion Glover’s company, Not Your Ordinary Tappers.] Because it was a bit of a boy’s club. Even Jelly’s Last Jam, it was Savion and Gregory. There were women around but not doing a damn thing! I’m a white girl who had plenty of access in other directions, but this is the world that meant the most to me and spoke the deepest and that I identified with. It’s amazing that you pushed through in that time to become that for us. It was awesome. It was incredible.
AYODELE | Thank you.
KITTY | I’m going to make a big topic jump. Does anyone want to speak about the difference in your process when you’re shifting from leading a company and generating work to collaborating with a director?
AYODELE | I have found that if a director brings you into the room, there’s a level of trust there, and it’s something that they’re really excited to discover themselves. Both Michael and Leigh were very—I don’t want to say hands off, they had opinions—but I felt like they were both open to whatever my perspective was for the particular project.
People have asked me before, “What’s the difference between rehearsing “Rat-Tat-TatTat” for Funny Girl and the company work that we do in the tap dance tradition?” And I don’t know, of course, maybe the vocabulary, maybe some of that gets sort of—I don’t want to say simplified, because I think what I did in Funny Girl is pretty intricate. But I don’t know. To me, it’s about the room, the environment that you create in the room. What I have always found—and I wonder if you would agree with this, Michelle—is that people love tap dancing. And the Funny Girl ensemble, for example, even though they didn’t come in with all the skills a professional tap dancer would have, they wanted it so badly and they could feel how important it was and how different it was for them. They worked their behinds off to get it to that level, and that was really exciting. So, I think the spirit in the room is the same, no matter what the intricacy of the phrase is, I think that the desire is the same.
DAVID | I’ll just share that I come from a tradition, and I see it wherever I go, that theatre and dance are really collaborative art forms. Even when you’re doing a solo, you have to interact with people. Part of what the job requires is an openness to recognize who is in the room and what their needs are. That’s partly involved in the hierarchy that one might encounter more in a commercial setting than in the downtown things that I’ve done; it’s not always the same uptown, so to speak. Ayodele, I think your point is really true that once the director has brought you in, there is already a conversation that has begun. Part of why I love doing this is that I get to work with amazing people on either side of the table, as it were. And that’s thrilling and inspiring.
"You assemble these influences, feeling it in your body, and that’s what eventually turned into dance making." —David Neumann
KITTY | I know for me, going from concert dance to, say, opera, it was almost a relief because I didn’t have all of the pressure on me. I didn’t have to produce it and hire everybody and get the theatre and get the dancers. I just came and choreographed and got to meet new people. Of course, there are challenges, but I found it to be liberating in a way.
DANIEL | I think what David said is right, that there is a collaborative nature that is assumed once you’re working together. But if you hop, skip, and jump to different fields from concert work to opera, to theatre, to Broadway, to movies, to television, to MTV, to commercials, they all have their different dynamic. And each dynamic is so delicate based on, as you said, the hierarchy. Are you doing it for money? Are you doing it for art? And then each one has their little system of who’s running the business. It happens across the board—it happens on Broadway; it happens in movies; I think it even happens in concert dance, whether you get a booking or not.
So, there’s this whole system that we have to deal with. It’s required because we’re on the planet together. It’s something that happens. However, I think when you find a collaborator that you connect with—be it another dancer, be it another choreographer, be it a musical artist, a visual artist, or a director—there’s a trust that develops and then your voice can come out. I find that with Julie [Taymor], of all people, because we trust each other. I mean, she’s crazy sometimes, I’m crazy a lot of times, and we won’t walk away from each other. I’ll say, “Well, what the hell are you talking about? Please explain it to me.” And she’ll start, or vice versa. There are people in the world where your voice can come out in collaboration, and you don’t have to run the show. Because otherwise, I feel sometimes, like when I make my own show, I’ve got to run it, because my ideas are crazy and nobody’s going to get them until they’re done. I’m going to keep talking and everyone’s going to say, what the hell are you talking about? I know, I don’t do it like everyone else. When you work with someone you know, it’s wonderful.
"If a director brings you into the room, there’s a level of trust there, and it’s something that they’re really excited to discover themselves." —Ayodele Casel
KITTY | This is our last question. What’s next?
AYODELE | I wanted to say, Daniel, there’s a line in the movie Tap where Gregory says, “Well, I don’t do it like everybody else.” I get that.
What’s next? Well, for me, what’s most imminent is a New York City Center premiere, “Artists at the Center.” Michelle, you used the word “expansive” in describing tap dancing. I love that this first half of this particular show is 10 choreographic voices within one act so that we can get a nice view of what tap dancing looks and feels like right now. It’s so beautiful. So that’s what’s next there.
The other thing I’m working on is writing. I have a commission from A.R.T. to continue working on the show that I was researching when I was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. I’m finishing that particular project up so that we can put it on its feet and get it on stage. Those are the most immediate things. And then the Funny Girl tour is happening in September.
DAVID | Speaking of [Funny Girl director] Michael Mayer, I’m doing a couple projects with Michael right now. We’re doing workshops, which are super fun. I’m going to continue collaborating with Noah Baumbach. I worked on a couple of his last films, which is really exciting, and Advanced Beginner Group is doing a third piece in our trilogy, which we started in 2018 and has been exploring a conversation between myself and theatre artist Marcella Murray on the subject of race and privilege, along with designer and artist Tei Blow. I’m very excited to go into that.
MICHELLE | Ephrat Asherie and I are hopefully going to be able to approach a collaboration that was almost at City Center, and now it might actually happen again. It’ll be a short something. I’m really looking forward to that, because what I’ve realized I value the most—and Daniel, you spoke to this in relationship to people’s teams and trust—is that it is so incredible to work with your friends. And I’m working with my company, remounting a few things.
But I did actually want to say one thing about that question that Kitty asked earlier, because I want to give James [Lapine] a ton of credit. There was not a ton of choreography in Flying Over Sunset, but it was a master class with him. It was very difficult for me, because I’ve been running my own company, to realize I wasn’t in charge. And James was so generous; he had me next to him constantly. And I was so grateful for what I learned from him.
His process was similar to how you described your process, Daniel. I was like, “What are we doing?” Whereas I always know exactly what I’m doing, and also like: first instinct, best instinct. James would be like, “Okay, cool. That was cool. Let’s try it another way.” And I would say, “They’re not all dancers, James. This is going to take a second. I have to tell them exactly what the blocking is. They can’t intuit it.” These actors were brilliant, these folks that I got to work with. But actors have questions; dancers don’t ask questions, they just do. I was like, “I have to answer eight questions about heel drops.”
I was challenged in all these ways that I so valued and realized that yes, tap dance can move forward the narrative, but it can also be the connective and emotional tissue, this abstract thing. Getting to feel that in this space was all thanks to this collaboration where I was pushed completely outside my comfort zone. I did get to make a “Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma’am!” tap piece. But there are other elements, choreographically, that were an incredible challenge. It was a humbling and an unbelievable learning process to step into that world and outside of mine. I wanted to say that as well. I would not do James or that entire experience, that incredible cast, justice without it.
DANIEL | There’s a lot of different things brewing all the time. I’ve been working for five years on trying to get this show with the music of The Doors. And I’ve been talking with Francis [Ford Coppola] for a couple years about a theatre project; we talked and talked and talked, and he ended up not having the funding for it. We would have these wonderful three-hour conversations over an espresso. He’s a great guy, a brilliant man, and he said, “I can’t do it, Daniel. We can’t.” I said, “Francis, don’t worry about it. Whatever you want to do that helps this world, I’m in, whatever it is.” And he dropped a film script on my desk that he’d been working on for 20 years, called Megalopolis, that’s coming out. It’s kind of a wild thing.
But the truth is, the only thing I really see as amazingly exciting is picking up this chainsaw and getting that big oak in my backyard and trying to do this chaise lounge, which is really hard. I mean, it’s unusual for a dancer to be holding a chainsaw, but it’s a trip. It’s the contrast that I love.
MICHELLE | Wait, Daniel, you’re making a chaise out of an oak tree that has fallen or you have taken down in your backyard?
DANIEL | An oak tree fell, it’s enormous. I cut about an eight-foot section. I can’t move it, so I have to do it up there in the hill. I’m trying to see if I can make a chaise; you can just lay on this piece of wood, and it’ll form to your body. I mean, it’ll be the most beautiful creation I’ve ever made if I can do it.
