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the body

The summer of 2020 has cautiously crept towards us over the last few weeks, often retreating into hiding for a tad longer and then slamming us with sweltering humidity. Unpredictability in weather feels fitting to the social context we live in. Life is a contrast. Staying home, nestling with loved ones, trying in vain to develop any sort of  ritualistic routine for the day to day;  Masked up and marching, confronting as a recent college graduate the erratic world of pandemic and the uprising against the perpetual state of white supremacy of our nation. This body always reminds me of rhythm when I feel it is missing. She is saturated with cyclical life; menstruation, emotion, blood, oxygen. Her heartbeat. When everything feels a bit lost, this is what I come back to.  Black Lives Matter. I am encouraging, urging, insisting everyone get involved in this antiracist movement and support Black people. There are a wide variety of ways to do this and I hope we all take the time to mak
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A waltz and some groove

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These queens Emma Dewey and Shayna Olsan joined me for this dance in celebration of our bodies, this shared sunny moment, and fresh air to breathe. The elemental joy of movement, together, is an irreplaceable gift. So much fullness in this dance! Waxing and waning sways and falls.  I am going to miss these women when the summer comes and those few of us left in Brunswick go our separate ways. I know that the wisdom and love we have all shared will carry me on in the coming months/years of this new twilight zone world. Until the next outdoor dance! Note: Video footage condenses space! Music:  Funky Sensation by Disclosure ft. Gwen CcCrae Blue Tirana by Tony Malaby, Johnny Åman, Peter Nilsson, Per-Oscar Nilsson
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Honoring Nancy Stark Smith

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In honor of Nancy Stark Smith (1952-2020). The percolation of your profound movement wisdom reached me last year and through the Underscore I learned how to see my body as firmly whole in its own place. Embodying "streaming" (the sense of ongoing lifeforce flowing from one's body) gave my work Like Water depth and perspective. In your honor, I share some of my authentic reflections after the first two Underscores I participated in. In addition, a short (very silhouetted) dance ruminating on the wisdom of your teachings.  "In the beginning, I was a sea creature. A jellyfish, a squid, a fish swimming around the dark ocean trying to find her school. I was underwater but I could breathe, floating, diving, slithering along the ocean floor, luxuriating in the feel of the sand on me. I am not sure who I am but I transform, ahh legs to carry me. Wanting to curl up like a leaf in the crest of her tree's trunk, nestled just right. Play like newborn jaguars, along the st
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A Duet (Trio)

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This post is dedicated to my grandmother, Nana, for inspiring me to sink into form and fill up space fully with my body. I love you and am thinking about you as these days pass in quarantine and spring blossoms. Emma Dewey joined me for this exploration and it was magical. A full 25 minutes of improvisation in the glorious sunshine and this wide open field, I felt truly struck with a creative energy I haven't in a while. I am so grateful for this moment and this duet. A dear mentor shared an article with me by the Chronicle for Higher Education, about the idea of productivity during COVID-19. This is a quote that she highlighted in particular, that resonates deeply with me in these times: "Now more than ever, we must abandon the performative and embrace the authentic. Our essential mental shifts require humility and patience. Focus on real internal change. These human transformations will be honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrated, beautiful, and divine. And they will b
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Honoring Earth Day

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Today I honor the earth with a dance I did under this incredible birch tree. From the moment I began dancing, it was intertwined with a deep love and reverence for the natural sanctuary of Vermont's woods and waters. I learned to dance and move and live as a human from the land and rivers and forests. Thank you to the earth-- her winds, her waters, her soils and creatures and fires and ices. I have learned profound lessons from you about movement, humanity, emotion, growth, and grounding. I honor you today with my own dance. Begin freewrite: "Sun, my love! Welcome. My face smiled at her. Thank you for your return, thank you to the birds for their symphony, this silky jacket, the peaking of grass. This tree carries sorrow, power. I feel shy, timid, I want to give her space and wrap myself in her embrace. I dance a duet, her strength is shared. I am still cutting through cobwebs of emotional complexity and oooh the bend and off-balance dance of muddy ground helps shake som
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Reverence to the Feeling of Baikal

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On Earth Day 2020, I am honoring an amazing dancer and a close friend, Kitrea Takata-Glushkoff. This is her dancing on the frozen Lake Baikal in Russia, the world's oldest, deepest lake. Her movement and this sacred space embody the grace, vulnerability, and gratitude my dancing journey has been touched and inspired by. I am so excited to honor the earth and all its waters today with her dancing. Kitrea's words: Reverence Baikal’s sound is a feeling. a feeling – in the soul of every being whose lifecycle she has nurtured, since her own birth 30 million years ago. a feeling - physical - as I lay my back against hers, and share in her movements – her ice shell plates rifting and subducting and colliding into one another. Baikal awakens. She slurps and scrushes and crunches. I dance to her life. her life of feeling. her feeling of sound. I sculpt her through dance. She paints the melody. I move in reverence. She rests- a never-ending pearly smooth plain. I rest, and inha
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National Water Dance 2020

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Saturday was National Water Dance 2020, a day to honor our earth's water and give gratitude to the land while sharing in a collective dance across the country. Here is the full video of our work, featuring dance based on my work, Like Water. Danced by Lucia Gagliardone, Shayna Olsan, Siena Wiedmann, Emma Dewey, Lydia Roe, Kitrea Takata-Glushkoff, and Lucy Sydel in Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and California. Music: Arvo Part,  Spiegel Im Spiegel Honoring this water has never felt so sacred, so profound. We dance with the country, in the same artistic space as millions, bodies coexisting and swirling around in the fresh air like the tide rolls over the rocks. Thank you. For the sustenance you give, the power you possess. The life you nourish. Thank you to this body, my body, our bodies together. I can feel our touch even as we stand at a distance. A palpable shared heartbeat. I feel very full, embraced with the love of this national dance and the feeling of being welcomed in
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Sitting in shapes

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My movement has been slow, heavy, a bit caught in the same rhythms. Body is processing the thoughts and emotions that built up and surpassed my capacity to feel all at once. I know and accept that right now, my movement isn't fully ready to emerge out into the world, is still working around inside my body and choosing to stay there. I know soon I will feel a release into full movement, but until then I accept and honor this state of slowness, of weight and inhibition, as important in the processing my body is doing to contend with the world.  Thank you Nana for encouraging me to lean in to form and shapes, I love you! Shot at the old foundation in Sharon, VT, and the graveyard tree in Brunswick, ME.
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A Trio with Lucy and Emma

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Today I feature Emma Dewey and Lucy Sydel, two of my biggest movement inspirations. Missing these two a lot! Here is a dance we all joined in together, to the song Heartbreaker by Alabama Shakes. I danced to this song in an earlier post, "explorations of the couch", and found that my movement was yearning for something new and more melancholy here as I dance in the snow. Perhaps it was the emotional intensity in the song matching with the unsettled world and the cold air and the knowledge that out there in the world Emma and Lucy were also diving into this dance. Together and alone. Alone and together. I love watching the way that everyone leans into the reverberations of the song in their own unique style. Emma spinning, Lucy playing with balance. There is a shared energy even though we are all far away. This song reminds me of those 8 am warmups while snow fell outside Edwards and we all woke our bodies up with swings and twists in unison. Bouncing up and down, the power
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Red Overalls

In my improvisation class last year with Professor Shaina Cantino, we dove into the concept of habitual movement for a while, and I became fascinated with how my body came back to certain movements again and again. Now during these COVID days, I return to my habits and find comfort in them. For an advanced rep class project, we filmed short little dances, and I decided to compile all my explorations into this video. I love how my body slides into a lunge with ease, relying on my two legs stretched out in two directions to balance me and keep me centered. The way my arms follow similar dives and swirls, tracking their well-trodden pathways in the sky. I love the moments when I allow myself to relish in these patterns, rather than search always for the new, the unique, the un-danced. Sometimes the greatest wisdom is found in those moments that my body returns to again and again. I wonder why. A mark of my pedestrian life? A innate whisper, left over from a womb dance? Or just the most c
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