I am a dancer and choreographer, a writer and storyteller. As a mover, I believe that my role lies in expressing all that one cannot express with words. Despite my written abilities, I find no comfort in the spoken word. There is an immense amount of pressure placed on the words that escape our lips, and I prefer to escape that weight on my tongue. It is the space between words where I find solace. It is my role as an artist to excavate the humanity in the silence. To give expression and motion to everything unsaid. Why must everything we feel be spoken? Must everything be converted to words?
Photography by Amanda Francis
Photography by Amanda Francis
My choreography and movement strive to answer that question, and in my experience the answer is a resounding no! True communication lies in the eyes and hands and chest. There are emotions we feel that have no universal language, that only exist in entangled knots in our bodies. Through contemporary movement, I untangle these knots, carefully and intensely. For myself, for the dancers, for the audience, I let the knots unravel underneath the spotlight for all to experience. It is vulnerable and raw, but it is necessary. The spotlight is necessary. I would like to put myself and my work into this spotlight, into a form of empathy in humanity, but most of all inherent joy. There is so much power in joy and passion. I value nothing more than the passion of that which I make and the empathy that it exudes.
However, throughout all of this is nothing. The space between words is nothing but breath and silence. Movement is just movement. I aspire to ascribe passion to that nothingness. To ascribe power to that unsaid. We are nothing except people. We must grapple with the silence of our own existence. It is my job as an artist to highlight the beauty in the nothingness of who we are. To create joy from nothing at all.
