I am a dancer, percussionist, performing artist, choreographer, educator, writer, and independent researcher.
I immerse myself in movement forms that are highly vernacular, hyper-localized, shifting, alive, and of the people. I parse out a 'know it when you see it' approach to movement. I explore how folk styles can retain integrity when pulled out of context. I struggle with being a cultural artist in multiple diasporas and grapple with insider and outsider identities. I overshare my own learning process.
I play with dance as an intellectual pursuit, a ritualized experience, a personal expression, an improvisation, a community builder, and as part of fully realized human expression.
All art has political, cultural, and historical context, and dance is no different. I decidedly contextualize my work even as I find that beat, move to that melody, express that emotion, and bring my audiences along on an ephemeral journey.
Dance is moving the body. Sometime the movement is purposeful, sometimes it's letting go, sometimes it to music, sometimes to the sounds that are around us.
Never is it a solo endeavor.
When I dance, I am never alone.
Behind me is my personal history — my teachers, mentors, supporters, haters, friends, loves, hopes, community.
Holding me up is collective history — the shifts and development of the disciplines I am working within and all those who have done it before me and do it alongside me.
Surrounding me is an environment — a physical space, music or sounds I am responding to or reflecting, and musicians that are there with me or who are heard via a recording.
In my body are the cultures and places I grew up in.
In my soul are my ancestors.
Authenticity to a dance form also means being honest with and authentic to yourself.
There is no denying who you are when you are moving your body. Like all dancers, I have learned to mimic movement, and then to recreate it, to pose, to shift, grow, and physically change. However, I also remind myself to come back to who I am and where I come from and how and who want to be in this world in order to keep myself honest through my movement and dance work.
The process of making a dance or doing dances is, in fact, the actual dance. The most rehearsed pieces will never be done the same way twice, as that is an impossibility in dance. It is time and it is repetition that allows us to deepen into the work, the movement, our ever-changing bodies and our ever-shifting abilities, so that every time we move there is something being said.
Dance alone (though see above!), dance with others, dance when you are uncomfortable, dance when you feel amazing.
Let it all work itself through you.
Take your time.