WORKS

 

COLOR STUDIES

A transdisciplinary, multi-installment study of color, ecology + choreography. The experience and sensorium of Color - what it elicits, conjures, and conveys in, around, and beyond language. Stories and memories hidden in bones and flesh, tucked in the corners of homes long-since lived in. Vibration, frequency, afterimage, ephemeral, spilling surfaces, structure without containment - expansive, expressive, limitless, and pulsing.

 
 

  • red dirt glitter (est. premiere 2027)

    Indulges in color and saturation—Ultra-black, thick, earthy, quicksilver action with a guttural, mystic-warrior Fauvism. Beneath the surface, the project delves into aesthetic conceptions through constellatory and compost-driven processes to consider the materiality of aesthetic.
    Support: UMD-ARHU Junior Faculty Summer Research Award and the Maya Brin Endowed Professorship in Dance.

  • Responds to the perilous consequences of progress and individualism, tracing the colossal beauty and profundity of the natural world. From calving glaciers to geologic time, the work seeks kinship with Nature’s structures, intelligence, and capacity for change.
    Performers: Candace Scarborough (Marielis Garcia in performance), Kaitlin Fox, Christina Robson, Sydney Lemelin. Original live sound by Adam Crawley aka DJ Plié.

  • Commissioned by The Wooden Floor (Santa Ana, CA, ages 14–17). A movement painting of geologic mechanization—majestic, cataclysmic, poetic. Dancers cascade, careen, and skitter through quicksilver rhythms and simmering pools of patience and care. Patterns emerge like hills shaped by time, rivers, and wind; performers become architects, painters, creators of a shared world.

  • “I am six years younger than my mother’s death.” Shadow, chorus, haunting, reckoning. Through movement, text, and elemental light, the work recounts a familial event—embodied, reshaped, and felt across time. A study in dis/re/orientation, it situates the present and future in the wake of the past.

  • A ballet-based study of color created with graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Maryland. Performed at the Faculty Dance Concert (The Clarice Performing Arts Center) and ACDA (Slippery Rock University).

  • Building, climactic, flirtatious, ecstatic, melancholic phrases. A choreographic study of magenta, driven by elliptical rhythm. Six performers yield to the experience of Color.
    Kaitlin Fox, Laurel Snyder, Sarah Beth Oppenheim/Marion Spencer, Candace Scarborough, Anna Adams Stark, Jasmine Hearn/Kendra Portier. Support: Dorothy Madden Dance Research Project, ARHU Seed Grant.

  • Initial exploration of magenta and afterimage.
    Performers: MK Ford, Leah Wilks, Kaitlin Fox, Lindsey Jennings, Alexis Miller, Natalie Stehly, Phoebe Ballard. Venue: Studio One Theater, Krannert Center, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

  • Nostalgia and disorientation of color—like objects bleached by the sun. Commissioned and performed by Zenon Dance Company. Presented at The Cowles Center (MN).

  • Created with graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Maryland. Performed at the Faculty Dance Concert (The Clarice Performing Arts Center), Millennium Stage at Lincoln Center, and ACDA (Seton Hill College, PA).

  • Created with and performed by Emory Dance Company. Performed at Schwartz Center for Performing Arts (GA).

 

PAN TONE VARIA TIONS

That we are shifted, subtly and profoundly, is the thing.

The Pantone Variations is one installment of Color Studies, an extensive series of interconnected variations developed in collaboration with dance artists across the U.S. Conceived during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project emerged as both a choreographic experiment and a community-based practice, initially shaped for virtual platforms. Like the Pantone color-matching system, the project functions as a comparative study: each variation distinct, yet connected through a shared foundation.

At its core is a ten-minute unison choreography composed of familiar steps—box step, step-touch, pony, grapevine, marching—sequenced into intricate syncopations and spatial patterns. The rigor of the choreography demands virtuosity, but uniformity is not the goal. Instead, its rigor lies in how performers stretch the material through rhythm, embellishment, suspension, or pleasure, and in the sustained attention and presence required to perform it. It is in this state that what I call psychic physics can emerge, transforming the material into poetic resonance—into color..

In this project, variation is not only a choreographic device but also a redistribution of authorship, positioning choreography as a site where difference, connection, and shared presence generate meaning.


  • Candace Scarborough + Kendra Portier

    As part of CRACE at Roehampton University, Portier and Scarborough return to the material as a site of change—emphasizing the power of coming together, where differences become assets for creating something new, rooted in sustained relationship. The work fuels support, fuels joy, and, above all, fuels collaborative creativity as a source of empowerment and clarity.

    Adriane Fang + Colleen Thomas

    Been wanting to do this for a long time. Spring 2026.

    Daniel Miramontes + alexx schilling

    Also been wanting to do this for a long time. Date TBD.

  • Friday, Sep 27 & Saturday, Sep 28, Connecticut College

    In process (experiment) showing overlapping two duets. Performers/collaborators: Emilia Bruno, Tristan Koepke, Christina Robson/Allie James, and Kendra Portier

    Opening for “Reveries,” a dance concert highlighting the work and teaching of Lisa Race and the vibrant entanglements of training histories, lineages, and creative relationships through choreography.

  • Saturday, May 11, 2024 at Dance Place in Washington D.C.

    Created with performers: Daniel Miramontes, Rebecca Steinberg, MK Ford, Brit Falcon, Bree Breeden, Emilia Bruno, and Kendra Portier.

    Co-Presentation at Dance Place: The choreography draws each dancer’s individual contributions and stories into the overall poeticism of the piece. Through rhythm, speed, and intensity, the movement is vibrant and expressive—saturated and brimming with color.

    Title inspired by Velvet Underground.

  • Created with Allie James and Tristan Koepke

    Research residency and support from Bates College (ME).

    Title inspired by Kim Deal / The Breeders

  • Created with Brit Falcon, MK Ford, Daniel Miramontes + Rebecca Steinberg.

    Lighting by Scott Monnin, sound collage by kp w/ original sound by Adam Crawley/DJ Plié, Joe Westerlund, and Kayleigh Gallagher.

    Title inspired by Built to Spill

  • Created with Bree Breeden + Jessie Young

    Beginning in quarantine, the necessary variations, practice, and togetherness: summer in Pantone.

    Title inspired by Kim Deal/ The Breeders

  • Supported by a UMD Graduate School Faculty Student Research Award, ARHU Advancement Grant, and the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance, Pantone was furthered with TDPS graduate students in Dance and Design. Our creative experiments culminated in solo, duet, trio, and sextet process-forward variations; developed and filmed in collaboration with (performers) Brit Falcon, MK Ford, Tristan Koepke, Javi Padilla, Christina Robson, Rebecca Steinberg, (UMD faculty, sound) Sam Crawford, and (sound) Adam Crawley/DJ Plié.

    Trio: Tristan Koepke, Rebecca Steinberg, + Brit Falcon.

    Duet: Mary Kate Ford + Christina Robson.

    Solo: Javi Padilla.

    Palette: All

  • Kristen O’Neal + Greg Catellier (one of the first willing to try this experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic)/Emory University (GA)

    Stevie Oakes + Adriane Fang (I think the first to return to in-person practice?)/SUNY Brockport and International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IAMDS) Conference

    Leah Wilkes + MK Ford (the original, photo left by Natalie Fiol)

    Candace Scarborough + Sarah Beth Oppenheim (the first to return to fully in-person)/Showdown at Gibney Dance Center

    Candace Scarborough + Kendra Portier / Bates Dance Festival

 

MORE

  • We’ll live in a lovely way…
    Landing, falling, orbiting prior selves—and a prior collaboration with Launch Movement Experiment—as both time capsule and departure.


    Created in collaboration with Aya Wilson, Katie Stehura, Sydnie Liggett, and Launch Movement. Sound design by Kendra Portier with Albert Mathias and samples from Nirvana, Melt Banana, and I’ve Lost. Lighting: The People Movers. Supported by The People Movers’ CRAWL at Gowanus Loft and NYU’s Tisch Summer Dance Residency. Presented at Gowanus Loft (NYC) and Jack Crystal Theater at Tisch (NYC).

  • “Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost” (M. Kudera). An Expressionist love-letter to NYC, HORSE investigates the containment of personal breakdown inside the spectacle of moving forward. Ambition and love serve as both conceptual desires and social behaviors—emblems of success and failure, entangling and liberating the performers in equal measure.

    Created with Anna Adams Stark, Edward Rice, Aya Wilson, Simon Thomas-Train (2013), Patrick Needham (2015). Sound design: Kendra Portier with music by Mike Wall, Darren Morze, Johann Strauss II, plus samples from Four Tet, Direwires, Murcof, Odd Nosdam. Support: Dixon Place, Arts for the People, Tisch Dance Residency, Gowanus Art + Production. Presented at Dixon Place (NYC), Gowanus Arts + Production (NYC), and Jack Crystal Theater at Tisch (NYC).

  • Identity as a manufactured response to the world underpins this ongoing solo practice. A movement study designed to soften forward drive and self-expectation. Daily reactions become character studies—distilled into qualitative rhythms, clipped and collaged into a nonlinear autobiography: equal parts communion and deep audit.

    Performed by Kendra Portier. Music: Mike Wall and Kendra Portier. Support: DanceNowNYC and Bates College residency (ME). Presented at Salem University, RoofTop Dance (NYC), Dancing Literate Project at Judson Memorial Church, and Gowanus Arts + Production’s Green Building (NYC).

  • An exploration of unison, generosity, and agency within a group—made possible by the generosity of the people themselves.


    Created with Meghan Frederick, Sydnie Liggett, Meg Madorin, Molly McSherry, Christina Jane Robson, Laurel Snyder. Support: Gowanus Art + Production, DanceNowNYC. Presented at Gowanus Arts + Production’s Green Building (NYC).

  • “One for sorrow, two for joy… ten for a bird you don’t want to miss.” Aimed at the gaps between language, subjective experience, and felt reality, the work overlays multiple perspectives of a singular event.

    Created with Laurel Snyder, Simon Thomas-Train, Christina Jane Robson, Leighton Lachman, Tristan Koepke, Dante Brown, Kendra Portier, Sara Gibbons.


    Also performed by Jasmine Hearn, Sara Gibbons, Marcos Durant, Rebecca Lubart, Emma Judkins. Support: Emerging Choreographer Award at Bates Dance Festival, Tisch Dance Residency. Presented at Jack Crystal Theater at Tisch (NYC), Gibney Dance Center, Triskelion Arts, and Schaeffer Theatre at Bates Dance Festival.

  • “My sisters,” and a story my Oma told of her own sisters in Jakarta. A rumination on embodied grief and grace, the work acknowledges the imagination’s ability to conjure what is absent, resolve the illogical, and sweeten what is harsh. Performers inhabit a billowing world both raw and determined, yet luscious and exposed.


    Created with Sydnie Liggett, Emma Judkins, Laurel Snyder, Megan Bascom, Christina Jane Robson, and a chorus of community friends. Costumes: Casey Loomis. Support: Dance New Amsterdam’s Splice Commission 2012. Presented at Dance New Amsterdam (NYC), WiredArts Fest at The Secret Theatre (NYC), Center for Performing Research (NYC).