about my work
I create layered performances in which ‘objects of memory,’ site, sound and embodiment converge, bringing a sense of long ago to the present.
I imagine: an atmosphere, image, mood–and what it’s like to be there.
I design and create–make possible, perceivable, tangible–this space of mind and memory.
I multiply processes–aiming towards a meeting place where private and common, past and present, singular and plural mingle via performance images that invite rather than exclude.
I embody responses to family ephemera.
I move: my body present, right here, right now.
I create cyclical patterns and an underlying rhythmic foundation, upon which an awareness of one's relationship to time can evolve and come into question.
I try to Make A Dance.
I become frustrated with all of the above, and begin to incorporate language into these works.
I start to wonder what it would be to create something made to be experienced entirely on the written page.
I am a director and choreographer. My interdisciplinary performance work is built by gathering the memories held by objects, sites, and sounds to converge with embodiment, bringing a sense of long ago to the present. My process is driven by a deeply imaginative practice employing a sort of time travel through which I design and create performances that strive to make the space of mind and memory perceivable, tangible.
For over a decade, I have created live works exploring these themes of history and memory. My recent work investigates the specific histories of female/femme ancestors, both in my singular family and our collective lineage. In conjuring stories that have never been recorded, I uncover lost tales through the body. Through an intimate relationship with audiences, I celebrate and share these narratives in varied methods, bespoke to each artifact, each memory. Specifically, my current work embodies responses to familial ephemera. Through the vessel of my physical body in this present moment, I translate cyclical patterns and an underlying rhythmic foundation, upon which an awareness of one's relationship to time can evolve and come into question. What lingers in my body from my ancestors? What of this time will I take with me if I am lucky to grow old? What will remain after?
You can see examples of works exploring these themes here:
– “Record” (One Arm Red, DUMBO, 2012” https://vimeo.com/95029666
– “s o u n d i ng line” (2019 - Snug Harbor Cultural Center) https://vimeo.com/95029666
– [ ] (work in progress) (BRIC Arts Media, BRIClab, 2021) https://vimeo.com/534638754/5588bc2f2d
Cue point: 7:55-10:5 at
This body of work has been built through long-standing, collaborative, intersectional relationships with performers Solana Hoffmann-Carter, Laura Witsken, Katie Swords, Kathryn Logan (also video artist), Rebecca Fitton (also writer and access practitioner), and Amanda Kmett’Pendry; partner and design collaborator Seth Easter; and composer Angélica Negrón. This work features evolving patterns of gestures sourced from within a deeply collaborative, layered process over time, anchored by a rhythmic underpinning. These mesmerizing sequences lull the viewers and performers into a sense of almost trancelike timelessness, which is eventually disrupted, bringing heightened attention to the present through this visit to the past.
My process has had a three-pronged approach, exploring these topics through somatic, social, and critical lenses. What are the body’s sensations in relation to this history? Who else might share a similar story? What are my own biases influencing my perspective? Together with my collaborators, I sculpt a finely crafted performance environment that cares deeply for its audiences. Within each thoughtfully composed space, I invite and nurture experiences of memories–both real and imagined– of family histories of myself, my collaborators, and our audiences. I recall past connections and inform present ones, highlighting particularly the visible and invisible labor of our female/femme ancestors. My work invites conversation into the question, “What is long ago, but still right now?"
I confront how the lineages of femme labor lives on in our bodies despite its omission in the dominant patriarchal, white supremecist histories. Even with the last half-century’s progressive enlargements of social roles, including the increasingly widespread acknowledgment of gender as a social conception, much remains under-recognized and uncelebrated. Through contextual research accompanying my practice, I have come to consider my work in conversation with creative oral histories, including scholar Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulations,” the combination of research with critical theory and fictional narrative to fill in the blanks left in the historical record. I privilege fiction as well as fact, but not in an effort to blur reality or obscure truth. Rather, my work aims to connect us beyond generations, by breathing a sense of daily life into what is long gone.
As a mother, I question how the often undervalued quotidian tasks of caring for a family resonate in my creative process. Recently, I have begun to imagine histories not only backward in time, but forward as well: speculative futures beyond the present. When considering the future, our collective lack of sufficient caregiving toward the Earth demands an urgency which weaves the global again with the personal. My current work explores questions of legacy, allowing the contemplation of time to consider a geologic scale. Through connection, community, and contemplation, my work aims to bring audiences into greater awareness of our lineages, and consideration of what we can learn in the present through conversations with the past and the future.
Over the last 2 years, I have incorporated more and more writing into my practice. I started writing alongside my work as a way of engaging in a solo creative process during the pandemic when I had no access to studio space or performers; I more recently began incorporating this writing into my performance work. I have developed this writing in a series of workshops with friend/mentor Karinne Keithly Syers/Pelagic School. My work Spaceship Made of Toothpicks (viewable above) is an example of my recorded written text within a performance work. Most recently, I created this audio work, “over and out,” as part of the Pelagic Radio Festival.
