During the process of creating Far and Near for Groundworks Dance Theater, I sensed that both Caroline Shaw and Michael Gordon’s music offered me a portal to think about how movement might function as language does. I developed a base of short and specific movements and deployed them throughout the piece as a form of syntax, toying with and rearranging them, layering and contrasting them, to explore out loud how form can build toward feeling, as well as how form itself is meaning. I’ve always loved the poem “Meaning” by Czeslaw Milosz, because it serves as a rationale for why we humans always have and always will make art. As I watched this new dance for Groundworks unfold, I realized I was exploring broad concepts: meaning and our urge for explanation; the many aspects of living we try to control and the inexorable forces that shape us anyway; our unceasing willfulness within a vast, revolving universe. Effort always moves me; I hope it will move you too. -Kate Weare Meaning by Czeslaw Milosz: When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset, The true meaning, ready to be decoded, What never added up will add up, What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on a branch? If night and day make no sense following each other? And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.