chronicles
between dog and wolf
(c) Debra Vidali, PhD
Emory University
Atlanta, GA
2025
Take photos, fieldnotes, jottings, voice notes, headnotes, foot notes, stretches, and a costume accessory, as necessary, he directed me, knowing my recordings might be choreographed with the tides of movement in the studios, or elsewhere.
I followed the nomadic group through wooden boards and rubber mats, velvet curtains and endless mirrors.
Sometimes they changed their names, becoming remnants of a different migration, the broken and thirsty people of Armenia.
# # #
I said goodbye to every piece of paper, every folder, every file, every staple, and every paper clip. I thanked them, seeing them restored as a home, being reborn as wooden beams and metal sutures. I wished them well and I thanked them for their service, their sacrifice. I helped to bury them.
# # #
The shelter might be my place of refuge, but it is open. No roof, walls, or windows. I could grab each pillar, one at a time, and feel my way through. Even on a moonless night. But the beams are irregular, diagonal, large. Sometimes my head fits through. And then someone else is there, wanting to also pass through. Do I recoil, block, collide, share, help?
# # #
And I haven’t even told you about the endless doors. For a shelter with no doors means that everything is a door. Even the open roof.
# # #
So the people of flow and god, who believed that they were between dog and wolf, battled among themselves — and inside themselves– about who was the most tame and who was the most feral. About who could rightfully dwell in the shelter. The shelter with no roof, no windows, no walls, and no doors.
# # #
Why do you want the shelter? Aren’t you a nomadic group, with wooden boards and rubber mats, velvet curtains and endless mirrors, not to mention different addresses? Sometimes you are rehearsing your arrival to your home, and the shelter isn’t even there.
# # #
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how to cite:
Vidali, Debra. 2025. chronicles between dog and wolf. Anthropology Theater Lab blog. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/anthrotheaterlab/