I will try to give a basic outline of how I work through my design process so that choreographers and designers may have a guide as to how to put their ideas together.
What has been really beautiful with this project is that there are so many similarities between the stories that I hear – nationally and internationally.
"I think all of my favorite experiences in dance have to do with the way they make me realize how much I don’t know about the world. I know that’s why I keep going to dance."
I didn’t feel any pressure to be good. I didn’t feel any pressure for the music to be good. I really didn’t care. Unfortunately maybe it’s cause the pendulum had swung back from this incredibly stressful experience.
"But one of my most extraordinary experiences as an artist, and I carry it with me still, was on Igbo Landing in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where I went to do research on Gullah culture. And I went to meditate, but I went to this particular site, which is off Dunbar Creek, and it’s a place where, the place where a great group of Igbo people had jumped off a slave ship, to avoid being made slaves."
Change of Elevation
When we first moved here, birds—red-headed house finches, I believe,a family—twittering high up
in the blue spruce that hangsfrom the neighbor’s yard. You...
ZULU, THE LANCE AND THE LANGUAGE
First, the language refused to enter my ear and be understood.
Instead I chased words around,
words that hovered beyond grasp
and...
Firework ScarsI stepped by the waterfall,memories restless, awakenedfrom induced night slumber,drugged with bottle contentsuntil the pain of tears vanishedUntil the misery of wrought hands,twisted...