Hitchiker of Beth Dwaihy

When people agreed to participate in what had become my Hitchiker Project, and were presented with the task of displaying the hitchiking gesture, they generally did what one would expect; stand there, usually looking down an imaginary road, and stick their thumb out. So I wasn't prepared for the incredible pose this Detroit dancer struck!

Dwaihy had learned to balance her stiffly prone body on the back of a chair using her pubic bone for a point of contact. Ouch!! The move was called for in a dance written by Denise Szykula, director of NONCE, an innovative dance troup. Beth sent her Hitchiker to Monsignor Hector Douaiyi (now Bishop) in Washington D.C. who promised to take part of it to Lebanon and set it on its way to the ruins at Baalbek, a center of dance in classical times.

It survived its abandonment on a highway outside the capitol city and arrived at the foot of the stairs of Monsignor Douaiyi's church on Sunday as the Prime Minister of Lebanon was coming out of services he observed while visiting Washington. Later, when Beth visited the Monsignor, parishioners recognized her immediately as "the hitch hiker".

 

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