At the beginning of this month I spent 9 days in Missoula, MT working with the dancers of Bare Bait Dance Company. The rehearsals over the week were a whirlwind, especially considering that I was also attending the first week of the Spring semester online; but I think the piece came out strong. It was odd to reset this work. It was a piece I was making last year (before the pandemic, before I moved to Columbus). The original cast was an incredible group of five collaborators

When I reflect over my first semester of grad school, the first thing that comes to mind is a swelling feeling of gratitude for my cohort. The eight of us went through massive life transitions in a time filled with uncertainty, and actively supported one another through it. I am grateful for my individual relationships with each of them, and grateful for the group dynamic we’ve developed together. About halfway through the semester, Jackie Courchene suggested that the eight o

The original idea for this piece was an all-day durational traveling performance. Katie O’Loughlin (fellow MFA and roommate) and I had grand schemes of choosing locations around the city where site-specific sections of choreography would happen, with performances happening in transit using public transportation, bikes, or scooters in between. We thought it would be a great way for us to get to know our new city. Fairly early on in the planning stages of this version, we reali

Early on in the semester I reached out to Jackie Courchene and Yukina Sato Crul (two fellow 1st year MFAs) to ask them if they would like to collaboratively create a group piece together. We decided to see what we could make while maintaining social distancing rules. I offered to them a costume idea from a piece I had been working on for the last year: hazmat suits. The hazmat suits provided a very specific impetus. We quickly realized that making a piece about Covid-19 was i

During the pandemic we are, on a global scale, experiencing a drastic limitation of mobility. For many of us in privileged positions within Western societies, this is the first time that our movement is limited; that contact with those whom we care about is prevented.* The beginning months of the quarantine were devastating to many of us. To me, the confined space was stifling. Suddenly having my personal life, social life, work life, and creative life all folding on top of o

Early on in the Fall semester, John Cartwright (a fellow 1st year MFA) initiated an idea about experimenting with partnering over Zoom. I was interested and joined him in the process, hoping we could experiment with new ways for digital bodies to interact with one another. As we began our brainstorming, the countless videos that the performing arts community released within the first few months of the pandemic started to scroll through my mind. Many were well done, many prese

Americanness, as an identifier, has always been tricky for me. For most of my life I have been resistant to labeling myself American, because I see ‘America’ as an oppressive world force, a place of inequality and hypocritical values. As a kid, I could never understand why every single morning we were required to stand with our hands over our hearts, staring at the dinky flag in the corner of the classroom to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Most days I quietly refused to par