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Transcript - Audio Label for In and On the Mountain
By Anna Halprin
Here was this thing that was ominous. There was a man, later called the Trailside Killer, who had ruthlessly murdered five women at five different sites on the trails of Mount Tamalpais. Everybody was afraid. Nobody was allowed to go up; however, I decided that I would do a dance about this killer on the mountain. And after the dance, which we did at the College of Marin, which is just at the foot of Mt. Tamalpais. And then the next day, I would go up to the mountain with the dancers and with anybody in the community -- children, families, adults -- and we would walk the trails, and we would go to each site where a woman had been murdered, and we would do an offering. It could be a song, a poem, a drawing, a dance, and we would reclaim that mountain, and it would be ours again.
It was in this context that my husband, Lawrence Halprin, and myself began a project called Search for Living Myths and Rituals Through Dance and the Environment. I didn't know then that it was going to last for five years, but from this workshop, we made a performance. That performance was the one we did at the College of Marin called In and On the Mountain and that was in 1981. This was not the kind of dance that I had done in the past. The idea for it had emerged from the six workshops that Larry and I led during that year. And in these workshops, hundreds of people from the community had taken part, exploring the environment, moving together, sharing reactions to their experiences. They had drawn pictures of images that came to them, and what was amazing was that Mount Tamalpais kept reappearing. When we noticed this recurring image, we knew we had found the myth that we were searching for. It wasn't only that the Trailside Killer had terrified the people in the community. He had defiled. He had denied. He had threatened the very heart of our community. For the community, the mountain became a symbol of our spiritual identity. Our responses to the mountain individually and collectively became our story or our myth, and how we would enact our myth would become our dance and our ritual.
The score that you see is the score that we did about the dance at the College of Marin the day, just the day before we all bust up to the top of the mountain to walk its trails. In and On the Mountain took place in a theater, as I said, at the College of Marin overlooking Mount Tamalpais. The theater became the symbolic cave, like a Native American kiva. The dancers invoked the spirit of the mountain and enacted the killings. The urgency and the realness was intense. Friends of the family and families of the women who had been murdered were in the audience. Someone called the police because they imagined the killer was present. During the night, after the performance, a series of ceremonies and events took place in preparation for the second part on the mountain. The next day witnesses and performers went to the mountain peak and walked down the trails where the killings had taken place. For the first time in two years, a group of people returned to the mountain and reclaimed it.
A few days after the ritual, the police received an anonymous phone tip, and the killer was caught. Often people get upset when I tell this story because they get caught up in the cause and effect or who gets credit / blame for what. Am I really saying that the ritual caused the capture of the killer? Or if I say yes, then the discussion immediately moves to the question of how. But it is of no use to quarrel about how the two events are related. It is important to understand that they are related. In one sense, we performed a prayer and our prayer was answered. Why argue about the power of prayer. Rejoice and try again, and again, and again, which is exactly what we do. But in the meantime, the dance turned into something new. It became the Planetary Dance, a dance for peace. And it is now being performed in forty different places around the world.
By Anna Halprin
Here was this thing that was ominous. There was a man, later called the Trailside Killer, who had ruthlessly murdered five women at five different sites on the trails of Mount Tamalpais. Everybody was afraid. Nobody was allowed to go up; however, I decided that I would do a dance about this killer on the mountain. And after the dance, which we did at the College of Marin, which is just at the foot of Mt. Tamalpais. And then the next day, I would go up to the mountain with the dancers and with anybody in the community -- children, families, adults -- and we would walk the trails, and we would go to each site where a woman had been murdered, and we would do an offering. It could be a song, a poem, a drawing, a dance, and we would reclaim that mountain, and it would be ours again.
It was in this context that my husband, Lawrence Halprin, and myself began a project called Search for Living Myths and Rituals Through Dance and the Environment. I didn't know then that it was going to last for five years, but from this workshop, we made a performance. That performance was the one we did at the College of Marin called In and On the Mountain and that was in 1981. This was not the kind of dance that I had done in the past. The idea for it had emerged from the six workshops that Larry and I led during that year. And in these workshops, hundreds of people from the community had taken part, exploring the environment, moving together, sharing reactions to their experiences. They had drawn pictures of images that came to them, and what was amazing was that Mount Tamalpais kept reappearing. When we noticed this recurring image, we knew we had found the myth that we were searching for. It wasn't only that the Trailside Killer had terrified the people in the community. He had defiled. He had denied. He had threatened the very heart of our community. For the community, the mountain became a symbol of our spiritual identity. Our responses to the mountain individually and collectively became our story or our myth, and how we would enact our myth would become our dance and our ritual.
The score that you see is the score that we did about the dance at the College of Marin the day, just the day before we all bust up to the top of the mountain to walk its trails. In and On the Mountain took place in a theater, as I said, at the College of Marin overlooking Mount Tamalpais. The theater became the symbolic cave, like a Native American kiva. The dancers invoked the spirit of the mountain and enacted the killings. The urgency and the realness was intense. Friends of the family and families of the women who had been murdered were in the audience. Someone called the police because they imagined the killer was present. During the night, after the performance, a series of ceremonies and events took place in preparation for the second part on the mountain. The next day witnesses and performers went to the mountain peak and walked down the trails where the killings had taken place. For the first time in two years, a group of people returned to the mountain and reclaimed it.
A few days after the ritual, the police received an anonymous phone tip, and the killer was caught. Often people get upset when I tell this story because they get caught up in the cause and effect or who gets credit / blame for what. Am I really saying that the ritual caused the capture of the killer? Or if I say yes, then the discussion immediately moves to the question of how. But it is of no use to quarrel about how the two events are related. It is important to understand that they are related. In one sense, we performed a prayer and our prayer was answered. Why argue about the power of prayer. Rejoice and try again, and again, and again, which is exactly what we do. But in the meantime, the dance turned into something new. It became the Planetary Dance, a dance for peace. And it is now being performed in forty different places around the world.