New York, NY
Born 1963, Washington D.C.
A central problem in contemporary dance is the degree to which it has become rarefied and dislocated from the culture in which it exists. The need to connect to a broad public is a key challenge; I balance this with my desire to make work which is centered in experimental processes and which seeks to push the boundaries of the form. I do not see these two goals as mutually exclusive. I seek to create experiences that are not defined by entertainment value systems, and which at times can elicit deeply private, personal, and intellectual responses. My work is rooted in a long and sometimes arduous period of exploration and development. I am deeply committed to questioning and critical evaluation as a means of moving forward my own work as well as the development of the form. Currently, issues surrounding the nature of the perceptual process are central to my work.
B.A. Sarah Lawrence College, 1985
2000 Invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to create a new dance commission for his White Oak Dance Company which was performed extensively on tour and in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House.
2001 Giant Empty for John Jasperse Company co-produced by Ballett Frankfurt and the 2000-01 Season Brooklyn Academy of Music's "Next Wave Festival 2001" with co-commissioning support from the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project and the American Dance Festival.
2003 Just two dancers, a duet for myself and long-term company member Juliette Mapp with a commissioned score by Chris Peck. The work is performed largely on platforms installed in the audience space of a traditional frontal venue, where each audience member was given his/her own hand mirror to compose their personal vision of a duet with occurs surrounding, and at times largely behind, them. The work managed to touch upon issues of perception, by using the simple device of a $1 hand mirror to focus the audience on the act of seeing. Simultaneously, the visual design of the work managed to critique the presumptions of the architecture of the theater in which the performance took place. Exciting parallels emerged between how the physical architecture of the theater space is designed to shape and at times limit the perception of a performance and how societal architecture is designed to shape our understanding of the world in which we live. I feel the work marks a new direction in my work.
1996 Awarded the following three prizes from the Rencontres Internationales , Choreographiques de Bagnolet, France: Prix d'Auteur for Excessories, Prix de Jan Fabre pour l'ouvre le plus subversive for Excessories, Prix d'ADAMI pour interpretation collective for members of John Jasperse Company for Excessories.
1998 Awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
2003 CALIFORNIA, premiered at La Festival International de la Danse a Cannes, France. Music: Jonathan Bepler. Set: Ammar Eloueini.
2003 just two dancers, premiered at Dance Theater Workshop, New York City. Music: Chris Peck.
2001 Giant Empty, premiered at Schauspielhaus, Frankfurt, Germany. Set:Matthias Bringmann. Sound mix: Michael Floyd.
