Performing, Creative Artist & Educator
Choreography & Collaboration
a recent collection of choreography and comissions
My Process
I am interested in the development and journey of the creative process, especially one that challenges the human form within a mindful and encouraging environment. I notice there is a unique thread that has existed in each of my works, much with the inclusion of texture and set pieces, that questions the human journey around adaptation, resilience, trust, and independent versus communal care. I enjoy the relationship to physics, and ways of finding new possibilities for each of our thresholds as individual artists working together. It is in my highest interest to choreograph with care, create a nourishing yet transforming environment where dancers are supported, noticed, and appreciated.
I understand dance as expression, voice, movement, and empowerment, in addition to social and political commentary.
Portfolio
See Me Closely, 2024
See Me Closely is a multifaceted work involving choreography of movement and objects, film, and projection mapping. It reflects on the challenges of vulnerability and connection. We are navigating a world of instant labels or mislabels, an age of relationships between screens over embodied interactions, a practice around editing ourselves for social media glimpses, and a technical evolution of feeling more connected than ever. How do we embrace these parts of our living and also maintain real connected honesty? How do we be listeners instead of labelers, and ultimately, see each other for the intimate, human, and whole versions of ourselves?
Commissioned by Utah Valley University's Contemporary Dance Ensemble
Photo Credit: Emily Muñoz
The Rate We Change, 2022, 2023
The Rate We Change is a collaborative piece involving 6 dancers and a human-powered spinning platform. The work is inspired by the effect of ongoingness within a changing world. We are an ever-adapting environment that requires engaging in destabilization to find stability, courage to find patience, and effort to find ease. Through the sharing of roles and collective care, adaptation through connection is made possible. Original Score by Daniel Clifton
*Creative Thesis Research presented at the University of Utah. This creation is also an American College Dance Association adjudicated selected work, chosen to present at the ACDA National Conference 2023.
Photo Credit: Todd Collins & Rachel Andes
Seat of Thought, 2022
Duet created at the University of Utah, exploring identity, curiosity, configuration, and rerouting. Object relationship, stream-of-consciousness speaking, choreography, and improvisational choices evolve into a witnessing of individual processing and community choice-making.
Photo Credit: Bree Robles
Alpine Waves, 2021
Alpine Waves is a response to the ongoing impact of Covid-19. It is specifically inspired by journalist Simon Huwiler's visual and audible demonstration of "Crowns and Tears," which depicted the death toll waves in Switzerland due to Covid-19 in 2020. However, we can all share in the all-consuming, ever-shifting, ever-evolving, search for stability through this crisis. How have you landed, or are you still falling?
*Creator of both projection animation and live performance.
An intimate curated event hosted by Jorgé Rojas through loveDANCEmore Sunday Series at SpyHop
Photo Credit: Jorgé Rojas
Where We Are Left Now, 2021
Work created at the University of Utah, exploring the presence of absence and the desire to connect to those we have lost. This work was inspired by the Wind Phone installation–an unconnected telephone booth in Ōtsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, where 1,000's of people come to continue conversations with those missing and deceased due to the Great Tsunami of 2011.
Cast/Shed/Throw, 2020
"When we allow the light within us to shine we give other people permission to allow the light within them to be expressed. Moreover, we find that the light within each of us is the same light. One Light. One Source. One Essence." -Rob Butler
Commissioned by the California State University of Los Angeles, Department of Theatre and Dance.
2019 REVERIE: R.E.M., A Figment of One’s Imagination, An Agreeable Place, 2019
Reverie: REM, A FIment of One's Imagination, An Agreeable Oasis is a three-part contemporary ballet choreographed to musical artists, Polo and Pan. Inspired by the many cycles of our dream state–from the hypnotic and calculated state of REM, to a pleasant trip to wonder–our dreams expand imagination. We encounter trance, theory, disillusion, familiarity, and happy bliss. The beauty of allowing ourselves to drift from stage to stage while staying curious...
Commissioned by Bakersfield City Ballet.
Photo credit: Aaron Van Cleave
Carte Blanche, 2019
A solo performance of breaking conventional performance structures. A task at indulging in the mess.
Commissioned by Kern Dance Alliance, presented within the "Ten Tiny Dances" project.
https://www.tentinydances.org/
Photo Credit: April & Co. Photographers
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Ha-Shi, 2019
Ha-Shi, one Japanese translation for “bridge,” is about the struggles within our ever-shifting lives and how we choose to confront and overcome them. We gravitate towards environments that bring us comfort and safety. However, it is through the process of building new relationships and adaptation in which we are able to surpass the dependency of our own and consider the limitless. It is bridging the old to the new and allowing transformation.
Commissioned by The University of Central Oklahoma for their performing dance company, Kaleidoscope. Choreography includes original composition in addition to collaborations with DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion, and Leandro Glory Demasco, Jr. Ha-Shi is an American College Dance Association adjudicated selected work.
Photo Credit: Britt C. Smith
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