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FFAT Vicki Lloid
Artist: Maddie Bailey
Stolen Dress
Special Dance Performance
The following is a rehearsal video of “Stolen Dress,” a poem by Tess Gallagher from her new collection "Is, Is Not" set to music and dance by Vicki Lloid in collaboration with Allison Michelle Keppel. Ms Gallagher and Ms Lloid have been collaborating for many years and both are excited to be able to premier this new work as part of ArtWalla’s virtual First Friday Art Tours. Sound engineering and videography in the video are provided by Rob Snow.
The poem below is Stolen Dress by Tess Gallagher, which is playing in the background of the rehearsal video.

Stolen Dress
by Tess Gallagher

I was walking through a vast darkness
in a dress studded with diamonds, the cloth
under them like chain mail—metallic,
form fitting like the sea to its horizon. I could
hear waves breaking on the shore and far off
concertina music drifting over the dunes. What
was I doing in high heels in sand in a diamond-studded

dress that had to be stolen? Fear washed
through me, as if one of those waves had
risen up and, against all the rules of waves,
splashed me from the shoulders
down. I was wet with diamonds and fear.
A small boat held offshore with its cold
yellow light pointing a long watery finger at me

while the stolen feeling of the dress sparkled
my location out into the universe. Thief! Thief!
came an interplanetary cry, causing me to
gaze up into the star-brilliant firmament,
for it wasn’t just a sky anymore. It had
taken on biblical stature. How had I
gotten into this dress, these unruly

waves, this queasy feeling I would be
found out? Time to run! my heart said,
pumping away under its brocade
of diamonds. Strange vacancies had
accumulated after all my sleep-plundered
nights. Thief! came the cry again, as if
I should recognize myself. And I did.

I flung those high heels into the depths,
took up my newfound identity, and without
the least remorse, began to run those diamonds
right out of this world.

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