Modern Dancing

A restless story in motion

Just over a year ago, after the first lockdown, the brilliant choreographer Inbal Pinto and I decided to co-create a Covid fairytale based on a short story I’d written a few weeks earlier. Working with Inbal was a unique and instructive experience for me. As an author, I’m used to focusing on plots, stories and characters, but Inbal was interested in different things. Above all: movement. As a result of our collaboration, I took another look at my stories and was amazed to find that, most of the time, they are completely blind to movement: my protagonists get angry, they love, they lie, and they cry, all of which is expressed in great detail in their dialogue and intricately described emotional states. But there is almost nothing about how these characters move. So I sat down and wrote this story especially for Inbal.

For Inbal

Photo by Lielle Sand

This story has just relocated to Autocorrect, my forthcoming book.

Riverhead Books

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Translated by Jessica Cohen

A housekeeping note:

Ever since starting Alphabet Soup, I’ve been racking my brain for a suitable perk to give the newsletter’s Founding Members. For someone in our over-heating, chaotic world to make the choice to support a newsletter is not at all trivial, and it deserves appreciation and reward. On the other hand—says the cool author to himself wryly—we don’t want to come off as obsequious. And then it struck me: every time I write a new story for the newsletter, I’ll immortalize one of the Founding Members by naming a problematic secondary character after him or her. The character might be evil, or a little slow, or just extremely unhealthy. That way, I can reward Founding Members with eternal literary life, but since their fictional counterpart will be a character they probably wouldn’t want to switch places with, it won’t be too cheesy. (Sorry, Clark, but if you wanted to have a superhero named after you, you should have supported the DC Comics newsletter instead). We begin today with Alma (without an h), who is a lot happier and sharper in real life. And Tom: Get ready, you’re up next!