Research
Position
As a collaborative, interdisciplinary artist, I often struggle to define my work in terminology that is satisfactory to the dance community. For this reason, among others, I appeal to the vocabulary present in theatre and performance studies to situate both my process and choreographic outcomes. Ultimately, my outcomes are tangentially related to theatre as a discipline, yet I consistently find inspiration among theatre artists and frequently seek out collaborative relationships in this field. This practice is congruent with my relentless desire to create interdisciplinary work.
Practice
The overarching theme of my choreographic research is dance for social change, while centering and amplifying marginalized voices. My current research agenda is violence in motion and the corporeality of staged aggression. This concentration originated from my fascination with direct violence, a sociological term used to describe violence where means of realization are not withheld, but directly destroyed. Thus, when a war is fought there is direct violence since killing or hurting a person certainly puts his actual somatic realization below his potential somatic realization.
Processs
My current research question is, “can expressing structural violence through choreographed movement initiate a shift in perspective and enact behavioral change in observers?” The structural violence discourse I am examining is mass incarceration and how it is problematized in the United States. I am exploring this research question with a cast of dancers who rehearse with me weekly, producing different outcomes as they naturally occur. The photos below are from this process.
You can view some of our movement outcomes on my Vimeo page: