artist statement

Physical expressions in dance often exist beyond the vocabulary of words.  Instead, I read a sensual, kinesthetic language, which carries its own impressionistic meanings. What do I infer from the subtle turn of a head or the amount of effort exerted while bounding through space?  Similar to daily life, I am constructing abstract narratives in response to what I experience. Much of which is nonverbal.

I am interested in the way that environments for dance require individuals to connect to the senses; spaces where people practice witnessing not only with their eyes, but through their skin.  Individuals interact through the rhythm of another’s breath and the spatial tensions that exist between them.  Relating through this medium trains the identification of self and other as well as recognizing self in other. Information is exchanged through the permeable boundaries of the body.  I like that live performance generally requires a delineation of time where performers and audiences come together and attempt to engage with a nuanced attention distinct from other modes of interaction.  I drink in more of what I miss in the day to day and I create the yet to be named experiences that dwell within my subconscious.

Through my creative work, I want to showcase the individual qualities of the performers.  Using improvisation helps me to illuminate a person’s movement tendencies and potentialities. I like to facilitate with a sense of play.  I like the dizzying affect of clashing full-bodied movement investigations up against meditative studies or layering sensory explorations into phrase material. These collisions serve as a catalyst for eliciting a dynamic range in unexpected movement expressions that reside within each individual. I want to acknowledge surface impressions and also reveal complex layers of subtlety and absurdity.  Working in this manner helps me to consider varied perspectives and to embrace what I can not predict or control.

Choreography and performance act as a way to break the bounds of what I presume to know and to encourage individuals to go beyond the limitations of known physicalization; these are ways to interrupt the linear structures that govern my everyday life and the categorical tendencies of my own mind. These processes help me to stay connected to impulse while attempting to accept the constantly evolving self, circumstance and other. In turn, I am better able to process the flood of information I meet in my external experience and to make decisions based on the present situation.  Waking the senses via the moving body and providing spaces for diverse groups to come together is what fuels my passion to create and perform.