Artist Statement and Manifesto 

I am a queer dance artist and facilitator of somatic experiences. I make performance that I consider to be visual art and dance artifacts that are the psychic remains of my dancing. These are in the form of drawing, film, and sculpture. My art is informed by my creative embodiment practice which I think of as tantric meditations. I am trying to sense things that are insensible. (I wonder if my practice can be a bridge between this world and the spirit world…the physical and the subtle… I wonder how sensitive I can become?) Most of my creative practices are self-designed, body-driven and intermixed with elements of Noguchi Taiso, and Butoh. I build choreographies using methods like Hijikata's Notation (movement directed by dreamlike imagery). Recently I have been working with other dancers and experimenting with enacting these practices/movements within an Altar Practice structure. The Altar Practice is a practice in which objects in a space are placed and replaced in relationships that feel charged, somehow sacred. I think of our bodies and movement scores as art objects with the ability to change relationship to ourselves and each other in order to create a charge. Whether in my solo or group projects, I imagine the dances as dream body worlds with energetic fields that color and fill space with their vibrations. (I wonder if viewers might feel as if stepping into another realm? I wonder if their bodies will absorb the color cast by my dreams?) My projects are best framed as installations which allows the work to occupy larger swaths of time and for people to enter and stay for as long as they are interested. (I wonder if this could be a contemplative space like a meditation hall for both viewers and movers to deepen into ourselves together.)

Manifesto; a reminder for me and a guide for the viewer:

* I design body-informed practices and rituals to cultivate consciousness, connection, and creativity.

* Rest is the foundation of my practice. I dance by not dancing. I let movement unfold by itself from stillness. The works reveal themselves.

* I dream into being.

* My artworks are containers for my practice and point to what I discover within.

* I use these rituals, practices and projects to widen the scope of my awareness, to alter consciousness, and to cultivate sensitivity.

* In highly sensitive states I register the Unseen.

* My body is a medium that detects the presence of the more-than-physical.

* I am an object with the capability of rearranging its relationship to other objects. Specifically placed arrangements create a sacred and erotic charge.

* My artdancing is an opportunity for the viewer to self-reflect and to connect to something within themselves. I am not an entertainer.

* My practice helps me to see, acknowledge and dismantle the patriarchal, capitalist and consumerist mentalities I have been born into and embody unintentionally. I believe that as I undo this within myself, the whole collective benefits.

Background photo by Justin Hickman