CREATIVE WORK

My creative work can be grouped into two primary areas: exploration of dance competition culture through “Miss Karen” and investigation of postmodern dance movement and choreographic approaches. 

MISS KAREN

A creative outcome of my dance competition culture research is the fictional persona “Miss Karen.”
Through Miss Karen, I examine dance competition culture through autobiographical, ethnographic, and satirical lenses. Miss Karen is based on my personal experiences with and ongoing research into dance competition culture. Miss Karen is situated in both fictional and non-fictional contexts, allowing me to extrapolate and exaggerate the ideals of dance competitions in relation to other ways of thinking about dance.

SELECTED WORKS

My work ranges from revealing self-portraits, to collaborative, site-specific group dances that emphasize a high sense of intuitive logic and athleticism, to conceptual movement-based works for non-dancers.

I am interested in exploring physicality, metaphor, and relationships through movement grounded in a merging of codified modern dance techniques, ballet, jazz dance, somatic practices, and postmodern approaches.

Sunshine. Moonlight. Good Times. Boogie. is a choreographic self-portrait that reveals the many layers of the fleeting nature of performance and a lifetime of identifying oneself through dance. The work includes four mini-solos that address what it feels like to be in the spotlight, the sensation of doing what you love, the memories others have of you, and celebrating the present.

Western Door/Power Trail is a collaborative performance created and performed with interactive media composer Todd Ingalls. The work traces issues of sustainability and water rights in relationship to ideas about power and relocation. Through exploring and embodying these ideas, evocative sound and visual environments emerge anew in each improvised and interactive performance.

Twelve Squared, collaboratively created with Mary Fitzgerald, is a site-specific group work between 12 dancers and a contemporary percussion ensemble, led by Simone Mancuso and JB Smith.

Pausing at the Threshold explores the moments where the mind shifts between alertness and slumber and is additionally inspired by the painting Star Fall by Anselm Keifer.

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