Is It Through You

My next show will take place on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center on March 15th, 2019 at 6:00pm.

I will present two incredibly meaningful works. Works that couldn't have come about unless I was truly inspired to dedicate my precious time, energy, mind, imagination, and... let's face it, my bank account to them.

Photo by Julie Sopoci

Awakenings is a love letter to the incredible depths found in the connection we, as humans, instinctively embody between the natural world and the man-made world. As a mass of beings with complex and disparate desires, we recognize the aspiration to climb the heights of the corporate ladder right to the penthouse office of the tallest skyscraper as akin to the aspiration to climb the tallest mountain and gaze down from its height. We feel the burrowing warmth of the blankets at night as we imagine the creatures of the deep forest and fields heading underground as the weather turns for the worse. In these linked vignettes, we see dancers as humans, plant, animal, and mineral moving and becoming the world that has always been, and the world we have created.

Photo by Julie Sopoci

Is It Through You is a experiment in movement to suss out the Personality of movement. Inspired by Walt Whitman's letter "To A Pupil", found in his book Leaves of Grass, we are creating individual solos based on our own movement legacy and how it informed the movements that define us as artists. Whitman demands: "The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need to accomplish it".  We answer with movement.

TO A PUPIL.

IS reform needed? is it through you?

The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you
need to accomplish it.

You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,
complexion, clean and sweet?

Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul
that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire
and command enters with you, and every one is impress'd
with your Personality?

O the magnet! the flesh over and over!

Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day
to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
elevatedness,

Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality.