Greetings, friends.  The sense of history in this room, of  belonging, going, doing, and being, is overwhelming.  I feel and see proof of a survival ethic here and it is reassuring, comforting, and both ancient and infinite.  It feels good.

Let me express my gratitude to the African American Dance Ensemble for inviting me to speak at this fine conference; one, wherein, I have been given the opportunity to begin a process which is taking me into the unfamiliar territory of expressing meaning solely through using words, and not through my familiar medium of movement and gesture.  I trust that this does not prove disadvantageous to us all.  Consider it my "memo to the world for today."

I believe that in our striving for togetherness through dance in the next millennium, we must each first, and now, get at one with ourselves.  We need to "get a grip", sense our poise, get on track -- to center ourselves, if you will, by asking and answering tough questions in reassessing our habits. Then when we all join together in our journey ahead, though  still on the edges of broken glass, we will celebrate the alliance of our strengthened heretofore individual journeys, and persistently press onward, without apology, with open eyes and minds. We will continue to explore new paths and discover new ways through creating inspired, informed, and impassioned works that transcend our common day to day existence, and in so doing, speak clearly and courageously of how we perceive our world and the one human species inhabiting it. As we live in a Babelic world with its confusion of tongues, we need sometimes to hush and listen to our own deeper or higher voices, and in turn, respond to our innate senses of rightness; and we all know when itís right.  You're either on your leg or you're not; the deeper the work, the clearer the dancing.

Let's leave behind us all the things that impede our growth and that put on the brakes of our journey forward into the next millennium, like the myriad exploitive ways of producing  evenings of nothing;  the limiting and demeaning kinds of marketing that falsely advertise and sell through self-serving, quantitative banalities reeking of the "God of Trend"; and all the vacuous formalisms that are devoid of anything that remotely  resembles manipulating our senses, or of having the substantive power to transform us toward the condition of the work"s creator. Too many empty seats in too many dark theatres attest to this absence of quality, signalling to me that far too many of us are staying home and remaining bereft of any reciprocal creative impulse that might be gained from an "art experience."  Let"s do the necessary work of  digging beneath slick surfaces and make the integrity of the works, and not only the high of performance, important again.  All the great works have not yet been done.  Exciting concepts, and deep stories of our time, too, will be, and are being presented, often with fresh impertinence and audacity, and that"s wonderful.  Some of these, too, will attain greatness.  Let us take the counsel of these works and move onward in the spirit of the myths of humankind.   Let them add to the dawning light of a better day; and let us not look back into darkness, under the threat of turning into a pillar of salt, or worse, of getting a proverbial crick in the neck.  Let the artists among us  continue to ask bigger questions, scream louder, joy  more profusely, and consciously mine their depths for substance that can be refined and  used for creating  a language  that can speak to us all of a viscerally familiar human animal process.  I speak here mainly of dance works made for the theatre; that hallowed place where we must continue  to bring more enlightenment and more light in exposing the darkness for what is hidden there, both actual and symbolical, so that the works, in the words of one of my first mentors, "of, by, and for people," may  keep reminding us of the timelessness of the human spirit.  Our common symbolic language of gesture and movement, with  its massive capacity to suggest, to heal, to affect change, to incite, to excite, can and must regain its place of importance in our human society.  We owe it to ourselves and to our elders, they who raised our minds to the standards we have laid down for ourselves.

Perhaps even more important, we owe it to the next generation to be clear of purpose, and to be honest, so that the human thread that spans millennia remains unbroken, and that our toil, ethic, caring, loving, and passion are not misconstrued as chaos.  Chaos is darkness.

I have a confession to make.  Recently, during a period when I realized I was out of touch with my own vitality  and felt that my professional life as I knew it was over, or mediocre, at best, for various reasons, I made an important discovery on my way back; and I  am back.  Please indulge me.

"God is in His Heaven and all ís right with the world!" I uttered, as I accidentally gazed upon a new moon hanging in the eastern sky over Los Angeles four months ago; a mantra of my youth erupting to surface in acknowledgement of beauty and wonder and, as it turned out, of me.  So overpowering was this sight, that I took the next off-ramp from the freeway to find a safe haven from which to view my moon.  Once parked, however, I suddenly found myself  looking deeply inward; deeper and deeper, near that place to where we are all driven during the painful, yet, ecstatic process of creating; a place where I seem to, with humility, go more and more frequently these days.  It is like thumbing through your out-of-date passport and  finding out that youíve already been there.  But this time, somehow, felt different.  This simple, taken for granted antediluvian spectacle was loudly and pointedly speaking to me; and I was listening, like a dancer listens to his choreographer.  I  soon began to feel that my moon vision was there to remind me of some things; namely, of who I was, where I was from, and of the gift that had been given to me.  I realized, too, that a misguided decision I had earlier made to leave the field of dance  was very wrong, and a betrayal of my gift.  Knowing that I could no more leave dance than I could stop my own heart from beating,  what possessed me?   I had been destined to dance. I had to. I did.  The very doors to my life had been opened to me through the physical act of what we call dancing.  I had stayed in pursuit of this childhood vision despite living in a place and time which surrounded me and my dreams with only negatives. Luckily, however, when I quite by chance saw Leontyne Price  on national T.V.  in 1955  making history  singing the opera Tosca, a first for the world, I was given an ironic permission to keep my dream.  This glorious event inspired in me the courage, at age fifteen in Lynchburg,Virginia, to shout.... "I look like her, if she can do it....then I can do it."  Voicing this statement marked the beginning of my conscious efforts to become the me of my dreams, to open my gift  and...we know how "God don't like" for us to not open our gifts!   I decided way back then that if I made it through all the American apartheid stuff, I could do anything.  How had I gotten so far off track?   Maybe I'll never know, but this important gleaning helped me to "get a grip" and to put things into perspective for myself.  Since that moon-nudge, I have slowly begun  to feel like the guy I once knew: hopeful, curious, and full of risk and hunger with a burning desire to work for something simply because it is good and makes sense, not because it carries with it a guarantee of success.

It was around this time that my host and friend called to invite me to speak at this esteemed conference.  "About what should  I speak?" I asked.  The immediate response being, and I quote, "Anything you want.  You see,  you're one of our living legends around here, so you must have lots to say."  I was flattered no end by the honor bestowed me and had no idea that this was my local status.  I guess I had missed the ceremony where legendhood was passed out.  Nevertheless, I gulped and replied, "I do have something to say but I say it best through movement and have no real burning desire to make a speech."  At the same time, I thought to myself...maybe my moon.  Remaining cordial, my host and I terminated our conversation;  and, yes, there was something that wouldn't let me flat out say, "No, I can't do it."  You see, I surmised there would be young people at this conference and I remembered... my Leontyne.  There's still lots of work to be done.

Togetherness through dance?  This  millenium, and "it ain't over 'til it's over."  A simple request from a  respectful friend  and colleague who understands the courage of vulnerability, and an L.A. moon encounter,  have  given me  the opportunity to stretch in unimagined  ways at exactly the right moment in my life.  The ramifications will be far-reaching and will, I'm sure, affect my future variously.

Working to communicate with clarity and passion in this verbal medium has already taught me that I have much more to say in my more at home medium of movement and gesture.  This, I am exceedingly glad to know, considering my pre-lunar thinking.  Having been re-empowered in the postlude of this second millennium, I now feel that I have all the fodder that I need with which to work in order to make a  triumphant entry into this next, this third millennium. That centering moon moment continues to resonate daily and remind me of who I am and who I can be.  And like that celestial body, we, too, I am reminded, pass through phases from new to full in a gloriously renewing cycle and, in the process, realize that our real work is in the moment; that the best is when it is happening; and that the next is even better, based on our journeys thus far.  I now know that my journey began even before that powerful liberating symbol of Ms. Price, and that I have been present during...well...most of my journey.  Present enough to know that what I do today has something to do with what happens tomorrow.

Just as I believe that the stars and moon and sun and all the planets are as alive as we are, and that they not only have an affect on us but we on them as well, I feel  we have a responsibility to each other.  My life affects you, and each of your's affects me, and we affect the next.  Simplistic?  Yes, I know, but...hey!!  What if my life, my act of living, made even one of my surrogate dance children's  (my student's ) life richer, and softer, and fuller, and more beautiful than I ever felt while in the act of dancing; where I first discovered that I was allowed to feel so deeply, and so good, and so whole, and so necessary;  qualities, quizzically, all contrary to what the greater society at that time persistently insisted on fostering?  Dancing told me, and continues to tell me, that I belong to a very large whole and that I am an important integer in this unit of world.  This, I most of all want for young ones to understand and to grow from, so that their moons may wax to full radiance and continue to resonate for them in their time.  Perhaps we all, in our togetherness, stand at the threshold of our greatest time--- and our greatest mission.    Peace.