I arrive to the practice of dance making through home spun slowness, a no car childhood spent walking and biking everywhere, storytelling as the motor for passing through distance to get to place. A no car childhood introduced spatial practice as a way of organizing possibility. Slow travel practices becoming a driver in the creation of dance works that live somewhere in the realms of heightened states of physicality, dreaming and walking.
Years as an Olympic level athlete (captain of the USA national team/rhythmic gymnastics) now distill down to a seeing the OUT OF BOUNDS edges of the floor exercise, a desire to know threshold boundary (that no go area of losing the competition); a threshold of experiencing loss. A desire to re-know the dynamics of high-level sport actions of coil release tension precision as well as wild flop fall catch release. There’s a certain tempo and force of work within sport, muscles made to coil release ingrained so bone deep. What is the rhythm of this work and how can it be softly summoned forth?
All this arrives me to working with alive choreographies that are highly physical endeavors made bright with precision, knife edge of fingertips pointed towards what comes next. Thoughts of a cavernous interior heaving wide, performer enduring more rise and fall—running towards/trying to catch the desire-- to know the moment unfolding. Long stretches of nothing, or slow unfoldings of durational chunks of material that once passed through, rush the work forward with focus and momentum.
In my making, I think about geologic time, fascial systems, the subterranean pulling downwards and weight of sky pulling chest up, the uprightness of the walk, the walk as an almost fall. As a soft watery cancer, I think about sand crabs stumbling forward with shell on back, sometimes clumsily, sometimes with grace always home-ing, searching for some temporary formation of home. I want that too, home-ing with each choreography I make.
image one: performing with wild space dance/performing in the milwaukee river (milwaukee, wi) image two: lAWRENCE UNIVERSITY/theatre arts’ MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION (APPLETON, WI), PC: ken cobb