New York, NY
Born 1952, Greeneville, Tennessee
I hear movement--not as sound, but as energy that constantly shifts, creating new voices that it is simultaneously ahead of, following, and in the moment of creating.
I am deep digging, constantly refiguring, looking for boundaryless movement available to dance--to find the uncodified, nonidiomatic shapes and rhythms of the body outside of canonized genres or codified vernaculars--to keep it raw--to get at a social look of the body while taking flight on the poetry of an art form.
Structurally, conceptually influenced by radical work in film, music, and poetry, my work is also committed to a "social modernism," to social and political (and not just personal) change.
Since 1996, I have been mostly interested in making large scale, evening-length works including Pandora's Cake Stain, a routing of Alban Berg's opera, Lulu through Mexican highlife, science/mind labfest, and "girlkulture," and most recently, Strike Me Lightning, a staging of nuns and cyborgs as disembodied virtual realities of genderless utopia. No matter what my themes, I tilt the movement toward what will give it the most notice: awkwardness, humor, eccentricity, seam showing transitions.
I am in love with the body as an instrument of visible thought and imagination.
1975 B.A. in Dance/Political Science, Antioch University
2002 Strike Me Lightning, sextet with music design by Bruce Andrews with Haena Kim, vocalist, Dan Evans Farkas, toys and electronics, costumes by Elizabeth Hope Clancy, lighting by David Fritz, and set design by Bryan Hayes; premiered at Performance Space 122, New York.
2000 Storming Heaven, for 12 dancers with music by Bruce Andrews, set design by Antonio Martorell, costumes by Elizabeth Hope Clancy, and lights by David Fritz; premiered at The Kitchen, New York.
1999 Teddy Growl, solo in collaboration with lighting designer David Fritz, music by Erik Satie; premiered at Altogether Different Festival, The Joyce Theater, New York.
1998 HUSHHUSH, for 12 dancers with music by Bruce Andrews, costumes by Elizabeth Hope Clancy, and lighting by Jay Ryan; premiered at Dance Theater Workshop, New York.
1997 Pandora's Cake Stain, for 11 dancers with music by Bruce Andrews and lighting by Jennifer Tipton; premiered at The Kitchen, New York.
1990 Along the Skidmark of Recorded History, solo with music by John Zorn; premiered at American Dance Festival, Durham, North Carolina.
1988 Moebius, quartet with music by Bun-Ching Lam, commissioned by American Dance Festival and performed at The Joyce Theater, New York.
1997 Mechanics of the Brain, film collaboration with Henry Hills, for six dancers with music by John Zorn; premiered in Stockholm.
1993 Little Lieutenant, film collaboration with Henry Hills, for six dancers with decor by James Casebere, music by Kurt Weill, and music arrangement by John Zorn; premiered in Mannheim, Germany.
1998, 1991, 1990, 1989,1987 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography
1996, 1990 Meet the Composer Choreographer Project grant for collaborations with John Zorn and Bruce Andrews
1993 New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for Small Room
1988 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
