ARTIST STATEMENT
Dance is revelatory for being and becoming.
Drawn to the poetic possibilities of movement, the dances I make explore consciousness and connection. My work lives in embodied study, crafted through solo and group choreographies for performance and practice. Each process is an opening, reaching for contact with something arcane, exquisite, visceral, and sage. I think about the phenomena of color, my mother’s young death, shaking & vibrational practices, and geologic time, interwoven with thoughts about living – actively contemplating our vitality and sustainability. I delight in the different ways people think and what is revealed beyond our constructs of talent, progress, and individuality. My dances are intricate compositions where well-wrought dancing melds into a mystic-post-modern-Fauvism. Each work attempts to activate something personal and resonant - a call to action.
I am haunted by basic human themes and attracted to concepts often considered phenomenological. Concepts, such as the physics & psychics of magenta, afterimage & loss, calving glaciers, and environmental empathy are fertile materials. Movement vacillates from rigorous banalities, like overdone hugs and excessive flapping, to wild off-kiltering that has performers skillfully plummeting and spiraling through the space. A duet that sounds like an egg cracking. A moment of stillness that appears to flutter under a forest of hot pink neon lights. I carve the immaterial into movement – sculpting swells of virtuosic action, intimate gestures, and phrasing that is woody, bright, and complex.
Art energizes us to care about our world and each other. In my work, I often think about how we come to care enough about an issue to get involved and how the dances I make can activate that care. Doing this work requires me to consistently audit my aesthetic and remain vigilant about the necessity of a diverse creative ecology. Paramount to deep, integrous work and being, I work with collaborators diverse in their training, history, body, and ways of thinking. I focus on community-driven practice and how the dances I make can contribute more effectively, and meaningfully, to the public sphere.
My approach to contemporary choreography is informed and fed by multiple creative genealogies and communities. I love big, expressive, sweaty, full dancing – influenced by my training in classical ballet, Dunham, and flamenco as well as my professional experience in postmodern, physical theater, and experimental realms. I am inspired by the work of (choreographers) Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon, Lucy Guerin, (teachers) Jennifer Nugent, Kathleen Hermesdorf, (writers) Maggie Nelson, adrienne maree brown, Haruki Murakami, (visual artists) Maya Hayuk, Xochi Solis, Josef Albers, and (musicians) Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and Junior Kimbrough, among many others… friends, peers, students, teachers, families, forests.