My Work
Mission Statement
I aim to explore my internal and external being, to create movement for the uniqueness of the body's physicality and the expressiveness of my ideas, and to create a sense of awareness of life in and around me. I hope to inspire a sense of awe in others while striving to invent movement ideas that move and capture the audience.
Creative Process
I usually begin a piece with an idea or message I'm trying to portray and continue to develop my process through my own research. I enjoy experimenting with pedestrian and gestural movements and using them in a literal sense or finding unique ways to abstract this type of movement. I create movement ideas and often use repetition because it connects the piece and brings it back to something familiar. Currently much of my work deals with social or political issues, gender roles and constraints, social interactions, and human emotion.
The aesthetic I want to portray is something that is felt deep within the body. I want the movement to come across as being real to each performer, especially when the movement is generated from my own body. I want the audience to sometimes feel uncomfortable, but also to come away with something that is genuine. I have an interest in the human body and the raw and emotive qualities it possesses. I try to create work that develops these qualities into something that takes over the entire body and can be seen and felt by the audience.
Choreography
hyper(fe)male (2012)
hyper(fe)male originated out of a composition study during graduate school that was based on a transformation. As I reworked the piece, I chose to work with the ideas of a male/female transformation and further explored the ideas of gender identity, hyper-masculinity/hyper-femininity, societal stereotypes, and gender roles. I chose to explore the exaggerated characteristics of both the "man" and the "woman" and how they are sometimes viewed and portrayed in society and in the media. I wanted to also portray the struggle that we all face at one time or another of the pressures of conforming to our gender roles in society and also being able to sometimes break free of that. There are a lot of gestural actions and pedestrian ways of moving throughout the piece and also a blatant physicality that is expressed in both the "man" and the "woman" roles.
Is This All? (2012)
Is This All? is based on my research on feminist theories and beliefs and the oppression that women still have to face today. We still live in a very patriarchal society and men obviously still "rule the world". Even though the rights of women and their duties/obligations have improved since the early 1900's, we still face much discrimination and unfair treatment everyday. While many of these issues may seem small and dismissible, they should not be taken lightly or the ways women are viewed and treated in society may never change. There are also many issues women face that are HUGE and affect us all. For example, women are still paid 75 cents to a man's dollar, 1 out of 3 women are a victim of sexual violence, women must be thin and pretty to succeed, and I could go on and on. Another serious issue I am enraged with is the issue of the right to our own bodies, especially in relation to abortion and the funds being take away from Planned Parenthood. No one but you should have the right to decide what is "right" for your own body.
I wanted this piece to have a lot of deeply felt emotion and angst felt throughout the entire body. The movement ideas came out of what I felt from my research and how I was affected by the stories of women that I read about. I wanted to use text in the piece in some format and I chose to record my own voice reading a couple of excerpts from feminists. The book I drew from was "Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists" and the two essays were written by Nellie Beckett and Marni Grossman.
Enfetter (2011)
Enfetter was inspired by an image, painted in the early 1900's, of a woman playing the cello standing with a strong posture. I created movement ideas based on the strings of the cello and created an unusual placement of the head and neck a top the torso.
The ideas evolved into the binding of oneself with the strings and also focused on the ways in which women were supposed to dress or behave in the earlier classical time periods and using the physicality of corsetry and bustiers. These ideas morphed into dealing with gender and sexuality and the struggles that we all face, but women especially.
In the piece, we experience ways of feeling tied up or bound and are trying to break free of this. We keep going through this cycle of binding ourselves and breaking out of it and it just keeps repeating. This relates to many other things women have faced in the past and are still facing today dealing with gender roles and issues. There is an emphasis for repeating certain actions or ideas to receive the desired outcome, but sometimes we just end up back where we started. In the end of the piece, we do finally break free of one of our physical restraints (bustier is removed), but we are still left with a feeling of doubt.
I tried to place a realistic emphasis on the emotional qualities the dancers and I are portraying, without being overly dramatic. There is a strong sense of feeling contained and noticing what that does to the body, both physically and mentally, and expressing this through the entire body. I aim to develop raw emotion and create the movement to specifically generate these emotions in a realistic manner.
Catalogued Impressions (2011)
Catalogued Impressions arose out of my experiences while living in New York City. I was amazed by all of the interesting people I came across and wanted to know so much more about them. I would sit in Union Square, on the subway, or in Central Park and just watch people. Some of the characters portrayed in the piece lean more towards a stereotype and others are more realistic. Sometimes it's hard to see the reality of certain people that you are just passing by. You may make assumptions about people based on their appearance, but really you have no idea about who they are as an individual. I asked the dancers to create their characters and give them some depth. However, the depth that each character has may not come across in the piece in detail, but it is still there underneath the surface.
I wanted to include the projections in order to get more close-up shots of each individual and also to focus on different parts of the body you may not pay as much attention to. One's facial expression and body language can really tell a lot about an individual. The 2 projections also help to make the stage seem larger and as if it is filled with more people than it actually is, which creates a more realistic experience of what it's like in New York City.
Can You See Me Now? (2010)
Can You See Me Now? was built upon my experiences and frustrations of being a bicyclist in a place that was not bike friendly. The danger that surrounds oneself while biking was something I thought about the used to development some of the movement ideas. I incorporated different types of breath into the piece to enhance the quality of the movement and what was being felt by the dancers. There is anger that is sensed in the piece and has an accusatory reaction to imply my own feelings. The piece was driven by my outrage of the ignorance of people towards bicyclists while driving a car and being oblivious to their surroundings. I tried to respond to my frustrations by using the body, face, and breath in a way that delt with the emotions involved. There were a lot of internal feelings I wanted the dancers to work with and to let that develop into their own reaction. A lot of the focus is directed out towards the audience to address the feelings of the piece and to leave the audience thinking about the issues at hand. Throughout the process of creating the work, I discovered that there was more to the piece than my original idea. The ways the dancers took the movement and gut feelings into their bodies allowed the piece to be seen as more than just one angry bicyclist expressing her animosities.
