Thank you so much for your comment, for coming to Tom’s memorial last week, and for being my teacher. I too was deeply by Tom’s intense physicality and deep psychic connection to that real yet intangible energy within us.

I was really happy to see you again after all these years. Your solo dance—dedicated to and performed in the manner of Tom’s own dancing—had a powerful effect on me. I’m sure it did on everyone else that evening, particularly for those of us who had performed and studied with Tom. Your performance with Meredith Monk was equally inspiring.

When I was Tom’s student, it was your example and your work that amplified what I learned from him. You helped me to discover performance: what was then a radically different art form and a radically different state of being from what I was as a painter, musician, and fledging media artist. I took your movement workshop in Tom’s Lodge Hall studio back in the summer of 1981. I can remember doing RAF calistenics and a lot of other physically demanding exercises in that June or July heat. Werner was there, and so were Andy Soma and Susan Wexler…hard to remember who else. I wish I could remember the title of the performance you did around that time. You used a large TV set as an icon and as elevated base to dance to a song from the Human League’s first album. What was the title of your piece and the title of that song?

Like you, Tom’s influence formed what I am as a person, not only as an artist. Using my body as a medium of expression was an exciting, difficult, and oftentimes scary challenge. I’m happy to say the risks paid off. Working through fear, not copping out…all that, along with the heightened sensitivity to what and how my physical self was, and is, enriched me as an artist and person. Thanks to Tom and again, thanks to you.