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What We Here Possess (1998) (excerpt)

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"What we here possess" is a line from an old shape note song that Jeff Davis sang at the very end of a 25-minute journey that Sun Ho Kim and I made through a field of feathers, created by Bebe Beard. It's my life-cycle piece. I guess every choreographer has to have one; looking back at the planting, playful time of youth, through sexuality and procreation, to harvesting, aging and the inevitability of death.

Reviews

"Kramer and Kim are an excellent partnership; it matters not a whit that she's old enough to be his mother. Both of them dance with a juicy, weighted lyricism. Some of the choreography unfolds with a slowness reminiscent of Butoh dancing. The second most poignant moment is when Kramer rolls over the feathers, mowing them down as she goes. Even more affecting is the finale when she carries Kim offstage, a moment hauntingly like the ending of Balanchine's "La Somnambula."...Watching the 53-year-old Kramer dancing with eloquence undiminished...I couldn't help hoping we'd all be around for a celebration of Dance Collective's 50th birthday."
--Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, Oct. 26, 1998

Kramer’s eloquent, poignant “”What we here possess” is also about the passage of time and the physical traces of memory. She and Sun Ho Kim (with noted folk musicians Jeff Davis and Bridget Fitzgerald) give a luminous performance amidst Bebe Beard’s exquisite carpet of feathers, which wave and flatten to etch a record of the dance.
--Karen Campbell, The Boston Herald, October 24, 1998