In my dance performances, I work with one other individual. I want to create a dyadic intimacy and explore the potential of what can be made. What we create derives from a predetermined choreographic form. The form is an armature for the individual performances. In each piece, the other performer and I decide and negotiate what the movements will be, as each performance demands that changes be made based on our physical capabilities and/or comfort levels. These decisions are informed rather than dictated by the choreography. In this way, ‘choreography,’ as it functions in my work, is a structure or mode of relating, and it is a basis for improvisation.
Every one of these duets is a specific education. Each body presents physical knowledge to the other, developing a vocabulary unique to the piece out of an identical choreographic structure and rote phrase-work. The piece is generative and rebellious; it builds upon itself and allows our experience to exceed its formal restrictions. It requires consent, openness to experimentation, and love for the unknown, ambiguous or queer territory of performance. What we perform is our relationship.
I am interested in the private experience of the performer that is sometimes in total isolation from the audience or the audience's reaction or interpretation. Dance is both subject and means of my research: it is the place where I explore how making work transforms me and others. I am not necessarily interested in ability or virtuosity, or form. I am interested in the thing that we share, or the thing that we can make. The relational practice generated through rehearsing lives as the work and the final performance is a small glimpse into that life which is created and sustained by our mistakes, pleasures and connections with each other. These pieces allow me and any other willing performer to be in a relationship, (competitive, familial, romantic, antagonistic, sexual, or otherwise) for any given period of time with varying levels of intensity and commitment required.
'brother sister lover' began as a collaboration with Gideon Grody-Patinkin. It was first performed as a works-in-progress in November 2011 at Open Performance through Movement Research. The piece was re-worked and newly developed with Joseph Teeling in February 2012 through Workshop, an itinerant performance space organized by Samara Davis and Alex Fleming. It has most recently been performed as an iteration called 'The Tirade' with Kate Berlant in June and September of 2012, and performed again as another iteration with Ana Lieberman in January 2013.
