A Letter to Tedd Robinson

Dear reader, I am sharing the second of two letters I wrote to Tedd since he passed unexpectedly August 27, 2022. The first letter was about our relationship and his career. The second, here, is about Falling (and Getting Up Again), which you might have just watched. I mention several people, often by their first names – their full names and an incomplete, brief description of them follows the letter.

February 2023

Dear Tedd,

Well, Fuck. A second letter! It’s a surprising, strong impulse for me. Yves1 said that as an artist, you weren’t afraid of trying things, of giving life to your imagination. Please receive this as a respectful homage to that quality in you. Since you died (six days before Normand2, four weeks before Jeanne Renaud, six weeks before Peter’s3 brother), I talk to Peter very regularly, almost as regularly as you used to, which makes you present in my life – through him and through this invitation to write about your work – in a way that weren’t before.

In the months following Alanna’s4 father’s death, she articulated the complexity of developing a new, inevitably one-sided relationship with him. I hold this as I write about your work Falling (and Getting Up Again) (2020), which I saw for the first time in the fall of 2022, when Priscilla5 invited me to write about it. It was emotional to watch. I am moved that you succinctly juxtaposed, wove together and encapsulated many of your fascinations: death, desire, rebirth, country life, fashion, tartan, opera, melodrama, theatricality, excess, minimalism, aloneness… I was touched by how strongly Yves Soglo, the director of photography and editor, rendered your craft. I can feel his breath and sensitive choices around distance, angles, focus and rhythm. Falling can be seen as a foreshadowing, but it’s also the stuff of your art. 

“It is a work about death, sex and love, three things that were through lines in most or all of his creations, wrote Tina6, with an emphasis on loss.” I reached out to her and Charles7, whom I know, and I spoke to Yves, whom I didn’t know, because I am curious about processes and relationships that support artworks. Your title is an exact description of what you were contending with health-wise. I eventually wrote to Simon8, whom you spoke with about your generalized epilepsy diagnosis weeks before you passed. Can I say that here? It’s artistically and ethically prickly. It would be strange to omit that you had been dealing with a neurological condition for several years, and that at the time of filming, you were unable to stand for a prolonged time as you would collapse. You wrote me briefly about your primary orthostatic tremor diagnosis in late 2019, offering a sense of scale: “Primary orthostatic tremors are 12-18 tremors per second, essential tremors are about 6-12 and Parkinson’s, about 2-6.” Simon, who has epilepsy, wrote about how rare it is to meet someone in contemporary dance who understands constant tremors. You spoke to him of the great distance between conceptual and experiential understanding. You shared how your health struggles increased your admiration of his practice and work. “Receiving this recognition and understanding of my experience was very meaningful, Simon wrote. People quickly forget about the tremors as they aren’t always visible.” I chart this because it deepens my reading of Falling.

I called Yves, which was initially awkward because I confused him with his brother Yvon9. You would have cackled over this blunder – you were unafraid of maladroitness! Yves, I learned, is largely self-taught. He has a communications degree. He danced and started filming dance with his brother. You met when he was working as an outside eye for Yvon in 2010. Encountering and filming your work for the first time with Charles and Tedd do Things with Sticks (2012), Yves said, “The more I looked, the more questions I had.” I loved hearing this, sensing his curiosity. You and Yves worked sans storyboard for Falling, he noted – it was just the two of you creating on the fly, with your ideas and a lot of costumes, choosing points of view together.

“It’s strange to be more moved now than at the time it was made,” expressed Yves. It’s unknowable if this was your intention – you were obsessed with death, and it wasn’t the first time you died in your artwork. Tina brought up the challenge of considering Falling with the “glaring” reality of your passing, which would have been true no matter the time and circumstance. Charles named the music file “Tedd Funeral Song,” saying you asked him to try and compose the music as if it were to be played at your funeral. His dramatic adaptation of Dido’s Lament by Purcell, one of your favourites, is apt. 

I have watched Falling several times. At first, I was in the sweep of it. Your home, you, your great clothes (high quality casual), nature. The garden gnomes, some of which I remembered. Yves mentioned you receiving permission to film the Buddhist statue, as representations of deities are sensitive. The Buddhist through line of life, death, and reincarnation. The acceleration and retrograde passage with short tableaux, miniature objects in miniature scenes, a kind of distillation of your theatrical works. And then you as Death, your back to us, the camera moving away as Charles sings, “Remember me…” 

It was luxurious to dive into the details, both alone and with Yves on the phone. The tiny rainbow in the first scene, the sun refracted on the camera lens. The bird-Phoenix-tree as a particularly charismatic performer, a brilliant combination of dead and alive. Yves laughed that you commanded the wind to lift your tartan blanket when the camera started rolling. Your queer moment(s) with the Monster shoes, the label being one of the few words in the video, along with the lyrics. You sitting, eyes fashionably shaded and face jewelled, balancing on your head a miniature chair, seating a miniature creature, balancing a twig on their head. Yves beautifully articulated different facets of your personality falling: “Public-facing Tedd falls, queer Tedd falls, classic Tedd falls, Tedd as Death falls, red/Japanese-inspired Tedd falls…” A strange, organic head goes from the ground, broken and powdery, and is retrograded and righted to whole, in a black coat – Yves told me it was a large mushroom. The statue of a woman balancing a large stick with small photographs balanced on it. And finally, the distance between you, black-clad, your back turned away from Yves/the camera/myself/life.

I am roughly the age you were when we met 24 years ago, but I am not as busy with death as you always seemed to have been. Thank you for Falling (and Getting Up Again). Bravo for this enduring trace that beautifully answers some of your questions around memory and legacy. And don’t worry, I’ll remember you Tedd.

Love,

Marie Claire