works

to love the rise (in progress)
2019+
// won’t you crash inside my soul with sweet salty memories of wet water, hot sun, sand, and you. me. alone in my own heart //
a dance exploring conscious femininity, ambition, growth mania, liminal space and transformation. Through movement practices and embodied sonic scapes, I investigate the body as human, animal, machine, energy and vessel for transformation as it traverses and descends deep into environments and states of liminality. It is a collage. There are lessons from Marion Woodman, Yrsa Daley-Ward and Prince. There is physical rigor and tenderness. There is glow and soft neutrals. There is sonic saturation and a symphony of silence. There is breaking, mending and listening.

developing solo research + new group process

w/ collaborating performers /
Symara Johnson
s. lumbert
Tara Sheena
Kimiko Tanabe
Ogemdi Ude
w/ live sound collaboration + performance by Slowdanger

presented in progress by The Chocolate Factory Theater (December 2019)
presented in progress by Art Klub, New Orleans LA (October 2019)
presented in progress by Local Project (curated by Sierra Ortega), Queens NY (August 2019)
presented in progress by Women in Motion salon, Soundance Studio Brooklyn NY (July 2019)
presented in progress by Pie & Performance, Brooklyn NY (May 2019)
presented in progress by MERDE the show, The Footlight, Queens NY (March 2019)
photos © Jessie Young

WOLF

'WOLF' is a dance that explores beautiful magic and tragic happenings in our world. Digging into storms, happiness, the memory of trauma, whiteness, cleaning and transformations, this solo examines falling under spells, the wild beauty of nature and its undeniable impending loss, red wine, red blood and how we get out from under it all. Nayyirah Waheed's 'salt', Sara Ahmed's 'The Promise of Happiness', Clarissa Pinkola Estés's 'Women Who Run With the Wolves', and essays from 'The Racial Imaginary' edited by Claudia Rankine are all lessons informing this project. 'WOLF' is a tonal and energetic work that calls for action and transformation, inviting us to feel, ask questions and consider what else both imaginatively and constructively.

THANK YOU to Trina Mannino of the Dance Enthusiast for your words on 'WOLF' at Danspace Project's DraftWork 3/16/19. read the article HERE

presented by Mondo Bizarro & Dancing Grounds at Catapult, New Orleans LA (October 2019)
presented by Danspace Project (DraftWork), New York NY (March 2019)
Base: Experimental Arts + Space, Seattle WA (February 2019)
presented by Green Space (Take Root Festival), Queens NY (January 2019)
presented by Domestic Performance Agency (DPAPP), Brooklyn NY (January 2019)
presented by Center for Performance Research (Fall Movement), Brooklyn NY (November 2018)
Amherst College, Amherst MA (October 2018)
Upper Jay Art Center, Upper Jay NY (August 2018)
Movement Research at the Judson Church, New York NY (May 2018)
Domestic Performance Agency, Brooklyn NY (December 2017)

watch 'WOLF' at Danspace Project: pre-show / performance
watch 'WOLF' at Green Space
photos © Stefano Altamura

storm studies
2018
presented by Brooklyn Studios for Dance (Sound Step), Brooklyn NY (October 2018)

extremely honored & excited to have been in residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance summer-> fall 2018 with composers Daniel Siles& Juan Pablo Siles through SoundStep II- BKSD's choreographer/composer residency. We collaborated to build a new dance & sound work. What emerged was a study in storms- natural and unnatural storms, mind storms, emotion storms, political shit storms- and of what remains after it all passes. We are excited to keep working on this new work!

watch 'storm studies'

photo © Malcom-x Betts

some 'Rosalie' visuals... thank you to collaborators Laura Bartczak, Whitney Browne, Scott Shaw, and Amandala Photography for capturing the work along the way.

Rosalie
2018
presented by Dance Now Festival at Joes Pub, New York NY (September 2018)
presented by Triskelion Arts (Split Bill Series), Brooklyn NY (April 2018)
presented by Gibney (Work Up), New York NY (March 2018)
Triskelion Arts (Summer Shake Up series), Triskelion Arts, Brooklyn NY (August 2017)
Three's Brewing (All Together Now: an evening of Interdisciplinary Performance) Brooklyn NY (May 2017)

Rosalie, an assisted solo performance, examines celebration's power and pitfalls, and the lessons we learn from places and people. The piece honors female-bodied goddesses and mentors present and past, and asks, how do we keep going, what is it that gets us through, when does celebration help and when does it hurt? Rosalie invites you to join me in a world, part sweet and personal, part dream, part nightmare. We will chat together, eat chocolate, listen to Venezuelan radio and to a bedtime story. It is a study in memory, letting go and in how we carry lessons learned from places and people.

watch Rosalie at Triskelion Arts
watch Rosalie at Gibney

photo © Whitney Browne Photography

Studies in Solitude
September 2015
created and performed while in residence at Catwalk Art Institute, Catskill NY

Studies in Solitude is a dance film and performance project that investigates the solo body's relationship to self and natural surroundings. The work examines how the container of a body shifts based on the content of surrounding landscape. This first installment of Studies in Solitude was created up in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley, and engages with both poetic pastoral landscapes as well as raw and real homes and neighborhoods of communities displaced up to Hudson from the Bronx. These studies invite the viewer to witness a body navigating within, around and amongst spatial histories.

watch Studies in Solitude installment 1
photo © Marion Spencer

Disappearbox,
May 2015
performed at Spoke the Hub as part of Alexandra Beller’s Choreolab performance showcase, Brooklyn NY

Disappearbox is an unfinished solo that explores humility and recovery. Drawing from studies of how a body thinks and processes information and feelings - specifically hurt and loss - this solo asks the questions “how do we heal?”and “when are we healed?” The embodiment of patience and persistence as they relate to healing and to achievement are investigated throughout the work, and the relationship between healing and achievement is examined. This work invites us to watch a body think, process and persist.

watch Disappearbox
film still © Martijn Hart

how did i get here?
November 2014
Tigermen Den, part of the New Orleans Fringe Festival, New Orleans LA
made & performed by Ellery Burton and Marion Spencer

how did I get here? Is a duet about labyrinths, direction, destiny and finding one's way. It is a journey wrestling with control over one's fate, amidst an environment that is disorienting you, disorienting us all perhaps. The piece invites us to consider our own individual paths and how much agency we have within our lives. how did i get here? first premiered in October 2014 as part of The Nature of Now, a Prospect 3+ exhibition at 3308 Magazine Street Gallery in New Orleans LA.

watch how did i get here?
photo © Claire Bangser

The Most Important Thing
September 2014
part of the Dance for Social Change Festival, New Orleans LA

The Most Important Thing, a solo performed by Kehinde Ishangi, is a dance that investigates dehumanization and what it takes to see people as people. This dance begins with the literal metaphor of human as trash, with Kehinde dancing inside of a black trash bag unnoticed by the audience at first. Ultimately, this work proposes that the beginning of the end of dehumanization might just possibly be things as simple as listening and dancing together.

watch The Most Important Thing
photo © Bound Entertainment, New Orleans

Straw
June 2014
presented as part of New Noise's Sound OFF VI: Works in Progress Festival
Clouet Gardens, New Orleans LA

Straw is a solo work in progress referencing the phrase "the last straw" and "the straw the broke the camel's back." The piece examines those final blows, and how we handle and accept what comes to pass in our lives.

watch Straw
photo © Marion Spencer

Anansi/Anna
March 2013
live art installation made and performed in collaboration with Monica Rose Kelly at Dancing Grounds

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do" -Georgia O'Keeffe

what is your greatest fear? what scares you the most? are you weaving your dreams into reality? Anansi is a durational and interactive live art installation that builds a giant spider web around everyone over the course of an evening, asking viewers to write down answers one of the above questions, that then get woven into the web, captured as prey. Anansi is inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's famous saying, and asks us to meditate on our own lives, perhaps inviting us to face our own fears and work to realize our wildest dreams.

watch highlights from Anansi
photo © Brita Everett