ARTIST STATEMENT

I make work that poses to the audience a series of questions. The process of questioning, unraveling meaning, and exploring answers is why I work. Dance is my opportunity to my audience and to myself.  I have agreed to let the audience into me and me into them because I am dependent on this close relationship.  I seek to communicate and to bond.  The best surprises are in small ways, original ways of thinking.  I seek innovation and open behavior to impact my audiences intimately, immediately.

I choreograph movement about themes of conflict without attempting to heal the polarity between thought and action.  I am curious as to how minor and seemingly random encounters can create a powerful inclusive narrative.  I weave vignettes together to serve as layered information toward a complex whole. The discreet battles within movement, sound, and memory excite my processes.  Rather than tell a static thematic tale, I form multi-layered works that deal with problem solving. In this way, I seek to guide viewers and myself through a challenge of multifaceted knots.

My movement style is heavily influenced by the energetic qualities of Javanese and Kung Fu movement traditions, built upon a background of ballet and modern vocabularies.  Use of held force, heavy focus, deep squats, and flexed feet and hands impact my movement.  I especially enjoy working with time: slow-motion tai-chi-like meditations versus repetitive nervous gestures at warp speed.

My dance seeks to heighten the commonplace events of subtle and restrained interactions in public and private spaces, individually and socially. I like to evoke a sense of the profound in the mundane, a sense of hope in futility, and the richness of empty space.