Artist Statement
As an artist I make work to ask questions: How does the body communicate our subconscious? How does our physicality humanize us and restore our dignity? What can we know only by dancing? I am interested in immediate personal experience and the impact it has on our capacity for empathy and our sense of interdependence. I am interested in the proliferation of dialogue and the interrogation of assumptions and how that can evolve human beings and the cultures they create. I am fascinated by the body as both a site of trauma and a medium for transformation. Most recently I am exploring dance and bodies of war though the exploration of Butoh after the bomb in Japan, and Gaga after the Holocaust in Germany. I am curious about dance’s unique capacity for creating and embodying empathy in a time of political contentiousness. My choreographic investigations and scholarly pursuits focus on my own fascination and family history with the quantum cosmos and micro universe and the ungrieved deaths of minoritarian bodies across history. I am curious about the metaphysics of death and ritual, and dance’s relationship to grief, community, and otherwise unknowable realms of transcendent consciousness. Dance understands that the axis of everything is a spiral: a constant spin and dive, and the practice allows me to live with eyes open in this off kilter universe. It is from here that I aim to destabilize the Western Europeanist aesthetic hierarchy. It is from this wobbling axis that I seek to find postcolonial practices to match our globalizing world.
Choreography:
I am interested in the sensual enjoyment, delicious defiance, and the voracious thrill of movement. I am interested in athleticism, movement multi-lingualism (dancers with an appetite for a multitude of physical languages), and subtlety in equal measure. I am interested in the intersection between the patient and quiet, and explosive and fresh. I have an appetite for moody soundscapes, driving rhythm, and the surreal qualities of forms like popping, waving, and belly dancing that prioritize the body’s aptitude for illusions in space. I became a fusion artist by chance as I followed my teachers and my honest cravings. I explore my physical hybridity in all of its problems and possibilities through choreography and collaboration. I am most excited when reimagining convention in unusual, indulgent, percussive, and texture based projects.
Research:
I am interested in decolonizing our movement practices by opening up the landscape of cross training and somatics to include modalities that address non Eurocentric uses of the body. Similarly, I am interested in researching dance and its role in social justice education and outreach. For me this is intimately tied to a postcolonial understanding of dance history, and my research on vernacular dances. I am particularly interested in the metaphysics of the cypher as a liminal space. My academic research has been to trace the roots of the cypher back to forms across the globe and to understand and unearth the hidden family tree of these approaches to movement in the face of predominantly proscenium concert trends. Finally, I am curious about transnationalism and it's complicated relationship to decolonization and appropriation. I am fascinated by movers like Tom Weksler who use a toolbox of movement approaches and modalities from practices around the world with respect, thoughtfulness, and dignity as a form of inquiry and movement based research. This physical embodiment of research is the most palatable and inspiring to me. My personal research is interested in the intersection of art, research, and activism. I am committed to lecture performance, and choreo-demonstration as mediums for sharing my work and an an intervention in our academic institutions. My investigations into Performance Studies and Postcolonial Studies has further validated the body as a necessary medium for reclaiming the modes of cultural production, knowledge, and wisdom that have been stamped out by Colonization. In this way the performance lecture is a remix of how we disseminate and share knowledge and re-assign importance to the many ways of knowing and understanding.
Choreography:
I am interested in the sensual enjoyment, delicious defiance, and the voracious thrill of movement. I am interested in athleticism, movement multi-lingualism (dancers with an appetite for a multitude of physical languages), and subtlety in equal measure. I am interested in the intersection between the patient and quiet, and explosive and fresh. I have an appetite for moody soundscapes, driving rhythm, and the surreal qualities of forms like popping, waving, and belly dancing that prioritize the body’s aptitude for illusions in space. I became a fusion artist by chance as I followed my teachers and my honest cravings. I explore my physical hybridity in all of its problems and possibilities through choreography and collaboration. I am most excited when reimagining convention in unusual, indulgent, percussive, and texture based projects.
Research:
I am interested in decolonizing our movement practices by opening up the landscape of cross training and somatics to include modalities that address non Eurocentric uses of the body. Similarly, I am interested in researching dance and its role in social justice education and outreach. For me this is intimately tied to a postcolonial understanding of dance history, and my research on vernacular dances. I am particularly interested in the metaphysics of the cypher as a liminal space. My academic research has been to trace the roots of the cypher back to forms across the globe and to understand and unearth the hidden family tree of these approaches to movement in the face of predominantly proscenium concert trends. Finally, I am curious about transnationalism and it's complicated relationship to decolonization and appropriation. I am fascinated by movers like Tom Weksler who use a toolbox of movement approaches and modalities from practices around the world with respect, thoughtfulness, and dignity as a form of inquiry and movement based research. This physical embodiment of research is the most palatable and inspiring to me. My personal research is interested in the intersection of art, research, and activism. I am committed to lecture performance, and choreo-demonstration as mediums for sharing my work and an an intervention in our academic institutions. My investigations into Performance Studies and Postcolonial Studies has further validated the body as a necessary medium for reclaiming the modes of cultural production, knowledge, and wisdom that have been stamped out by Colonization. In this way the performance lecture is a remix of how we disseminate and share knowledge and re-assign importance to the many ways of knowing and understanding.
