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by Randy Peyser David Ludwig was at the top of his profession, a senior architect, designing multi-million dollar homes that would have made Howard Roark drool. (You did read “The Fountainhead” a hundred years ago, didn’t you?) But increasingly throughout recent years, David encountered the same problem—because of his standards, he felt challenged to come up with dramatic schemes and big ideas. But after the city planning process, the client evaluation process, the budget process, and many other factors, the end result was a finished project which was almost always less than his original vision. He came to the understanding that the process of design required him to create an image that would be much bigger than his final product, because ultimately, his image would be “peeled back.” So, as beautiful and impressive as his multi-million dollar homes were, they did not exemplify the full scope of his creative potential. Then David had an unusual life-changing experience. He was asked to paint a theatrical backdrop on silk for the stage of a community ballet theater in which the last of his four dancing daughters actively participated. With no prior experience of painting on silk, no studio space in which to create the giant 46’ x 21’ backdrop, and a limited time frame, David reluctantly accepted the challenge. He viewed the task as a one-time experience and as an opportunity to support the ballet theater, an organization that had brought much joy to his daughters throughout the years. He also believed that, given the circumstances, it was a learning opportunity, so he decided not to worry about things being perfect. He just wanted to produce something that was serviceable. When the drop was done, David thought it was okay, but not special. For three months, it sat folded in a box until the time of the production. It wasn’t until the piece was hung in the theater and he overheard the numerous positive reactions that he realized the magnitude of what he had created. The reactions of the dance patrons were much stronger and clearer than the reactions he was getting for his architectural design work. After completing a few more large pieces for the ballet, he came to a point at which he asked himself, “Why am I struggling against the idea that this stage is ‘real artwork’? Why have I considered this experience to be an obligation, a volunteer promise to a non-profit organization?” He decided to adopt a new perspective and explore the world of silk further to see what might unfold. He had previously only expressed his creativity as an architect. Now his creative expression seemed amplified by his newfound interest in silk. He started calling himself an artist. Although architecture had offered some elements of art, such as drawing and sketching, according to David it seemed hard-edged, nuts and bolts oriented, with the final decisions ending up in concrete and wood. Silk, on the other hand, by its ephemeral nature, evoked a soft, subtle kind of reaction in response to its impressionistic quality. With each piece he produced, David continued to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback and support from professional artists and laypeople alike. Jokingly, David says that he’s convinced that when clients are about to be shown an architectural design, they have a little tape playing in their head which says, “You’re not going to like this. It’s not you. It’s too much money. What will the neighbors think? What will your family think?” But whenever he shows someone a piece of silk, there’s a little tape that plays in their heads which says, “It’s going to be beautiful,” and whatever he shows them seems pre-destined to be seen as beautiful. Around the same time that David discovered his connection with silk, he also became more intensely involved in the world of dance, not knowing that eventually his passions for both silk and dance would one day merge. David had begun dancing as a teenager. For six years, he learned all the popular steps of the time, danced in club competitions, and won prizes. He describes his passion for dance as a “version of the kundalini experience—the sensation of dancing felt like an inner gyroscope had begun spinning inside of me, and once awakened, this gyroscope never went back to sleep.” Even though he got married, had kids, and stopped dancing for ten years, the desire to dance was perpetually churning inside of him, and he had a feeling that eventually he would get back to it. When the ballet school, where his daughters took classes, created a class for men, David decided to take it, thinking of it as an exercise class. For the next five years, he participated in the class, and actually performed with the ballet, playing the parts of the older characters, like Drosselmeyer in the Nutcracker, and the town mayor in Copelius. He also discovered Dance Spirit, a free-form, do-your-own expressive movement event attended by a hundred people twice a week in Northern California. At Dance Spirit, David developed an ongoing interaction with a belly dancer who would bring her belly dancing paraphernalia into this contemporary dance situation. Although belly dancing music was not featured at this event, the woman had fun creating movement with her various dance steps and with her costumes and jewelry. David found himself particularly fascinated with her coin belt, an elaborate belted piece with hundreds of coins which sounded as she moved. Feeling compelled to try it on, and having her permission to do so, he immediately felt like he was receiving a body message, as though some sort of visceral memory was coming through from some other place and time. The feeling felt all too familiar, yet had no basis in this current reality. He asked if men ever did belly dancing, and was told, “Sometimes.” Over the next year, David casually looked for a coin belt, but couldn’t find one. Then one night, he was dancing with a folk dance group, when another woman arrived with a bag of belly dancing costumes. She encouraged all of the women to put on her flowing skirts and other tops and blouses she’d brought. Then on New Year’s Eve, when they all arrived at the folk dance group in black-tie, she brought a whole set of dance skirts for everyone to wear. “She wanted us all to dance a certain dance, but said it created a really great image if everybody in the circle was wearing a skirt, because there were a series of kick moves where all the skirts made a beautiful pattern. She cajoled the seven men in attendance into wearing skirts. It was my first experience of putting on a skirt in my whole life and I had a very powerful interaction with this piece of fabric.” “Afterwards, one of the women asked me, “What was it like?” And I said, “It’s all about the ankles.” She said, “What?” And I said, “The hem comes down and touches your ankles in a way that informs you about how you’re moving. When you’re moving properly in terms of the dance, it’s telling you that, and when you’re not, it’s kind of static; it’s giving you the information that you’re not doing it correctly.” The woman replied, “I never realized that.” Of course, having worn skirts her whole life, the nerves around her ankles were de-sensitized, so she wasn’t getting this information, or she’d blocked it.” David decided to buy one of the dance belts, a tassle belt. “It wasn’t a coin belt, but it was the closest I had come to finding something that informed me about my movement.” Next he decided he owed himself a few lessons to learn the proper way to dance with it. He cautiously enrolled in two classes, one a tribal, folk-dance oriented class, and the other, a more flashy, feminine, cabaret-style belly dancing class. David enjoyed the kinesthetic quality of the movement and experienced an enhanced sense of inner grace as he danced, but being the only man in these groups, he had to ask himself, “Where is this coming from? What are the roots of this feeling? Why am I drawn to this dance form?” Not having a Middle Eastern backround or knowing anybody from that part of the world, he began to view his love of belly dancing as some sort of inner awakening of a past experience. In his desire to explore the roots of his feelings, he composed a list which he titled, “Remembering the Goddess.” Going back in his memory, he catalogued every experience he could think of from birth where he could remember feeling a sense of connection with the Divine Feminine. His list was three pages long, single-spaced. But the major turning point in David’s understanding of this connection to dance and the Divine Feminine came about as a result of a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Although he had no prior personal connection with the holocaust, seeing the life-sized photographs of the camps and the actual railroad cars caused him to have a very powerful inner reaction. That night, he dreamt about having been in the Holocaust, as a seventeen-year-old gypsy woman who was killed at Auschwitz. This gypsy woman was a dancer. In the dream, the message was conveyed to David that he was dancing for her. Upon awakening and still feeling the presence of this young gypsy woman, David gave her the name Tania, the first name that came into his mind. Sometimes David feels as though Tania is totally present while he dances, and although he might be the only man in the class, oftentimes he believes there are no men there, or at least there is no sense of male energy present. He feels accepted by the women in the classes he attends and has also come to accept himself for being a man interested in a dance form primarily associated with women. In one class, when finger cymbals and veil work were going to be taught, the teacher brought out many plain pieces of brightly colored fabric—of yardage—to be used for the veils. David hadn’t known that all the belly dancers in the world danced with plain yardage. A lightbulb went off in his head—“Why not create a whole new art form, a belly dancing veil which was specifically intended for ceremonial use?” He had been searching for a way to work with silk which would be suitable for people to buy, but had no interest in making clothing. Until this moment, he hadn’t guessed that the format he was searching for might be related to the dance form he loved. In order to make his veils authentic, David wanted to learn something about Persian graphics. At his office the next day, a book he had never noticed before, featuring tile patterns from Persian mosques, almost popped off the shelf into his lap. The book contained carefully inked drawings of the different tile patterns in the mosques. As he began to study the tile patterns, David realized that Middle Eastern graphics were organized around the concept of a border surrounding a center field. The borders were either geometric or floral in design. With this insight, he decided to make a veil with a border. Persian writing from the Koran always appeared around the border, but not wanting to use a passage improperly, he decided to forego the Persian text, and instead, chose inspirational quotations from poets such as Kahlil Gibran and Rumi. Experimenting with different design ideas for the center of the veils, David discovered that he enjoyed painting graphic images which held personal meaning for each of the dancers. Looking down at the earth through the eyes of an eagle in flight, the full moon rising above Mount Shasta, and whirling comets, emerged on the shimmering surfaces of the silk. Now David also designs unique smaller family heirloom pieces called “termehs,” (pronounced tur-may’) for newlyweds or those celebrating a special occasion. Taken from the Iraqi tradition, the turmeh is a a ceremonial piece of fabric which is given to the bride and groom at the time of their wedding. It is then hung on the wall of their house in a ceremonial niche, and any time the family has a ceremony, like a birth or an anniversary, the turmeh is used as a part of the ceremony. David inscribes the name of the couple and the date of their marriage in gold around the border of their sacred piece. He also creates special wall-hangings honoring newborns, as well as pictorial scarves of geographical locations such as the San Francisco skyline or the Mendocino coastline. In addition, he has produced a new line of very elegant scarves, and various galleries are beginning to show his work. David intends to spend more time on silk this year than last year as he slowly shifts his creative emphasis away from architecture. He struggles with the idea of leaving architecture completely, because at any time, he has about ten silk projects in mind. But he realizes that his architecture has been funding his silk work for the past two years, and continues to do so. In the near future, he hopes to create more giant silk backdrops for dance companies outside of the Bay Area. “Currently,” says David, “choreographers and directors don’t know that they have silk as an option for stage design.” So David is headed to New York to spread the word. This past year, David won a national silk painting competition, sponsored by North Light Press. The piece, a giant backdrop for the Berkeley Ballet Theater featuring Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral, from Act Two of the Nutcracker, is featured in a book called, “The Best of Silk Painting” by Tuckman and Janas. David Ludwig may be reached at (415) 485-5867 or e-mail at davidl@nbn.com.
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