Kickstarter

Hello Everyone! I am a dancer-performer-artist. I'm super excited to have been awarded a monthlong residency by Project Space Available (http://projectspaceavailable.com/) to research and develop site-specific work in and around Studio Dee, located on Capitol Hill in Seattle WA. I have been granted sole use of the studio for the entire month of August, 2010.

YOUR SUPPORT: Project Space Available offers a wonderful, amazing opportunity for "creative process and discovery," as Monica Gilliam and Vanessa DeWolf, the organizers, have written on the website (http://projectspaceavailable.com/) for the Project. However, it is only a space grant. There is no per diem for meals or funding for my travel expense to get there.

It is key to my project to use the Seattle studio as both creative workplace and living quarters, much as I have done with my home in Chicago, blending the life and art processes like artists I admire such as Linda Montano and Marina Abramovic. I also want to create a makeshift kitchen so I can prepare simple meals. Your contributions will make this project possible by helping me get to Seattle (airfare) and by helping to provide for necessary groceries during my residency.

ABOUT MY PROJECT: While we often focus on the bodies of dancers and imagine them gliding through open, empty space, in our universe that never really happens. A dance space may be largely unobstructed, but it is a place, a real location on the planet. Dances may occur indoors or outdoors, with a floor or on grass, beneath a ceiling or sky. With Dream-Friendly House, my intention is to use the residency in Studio Dee to deepen awareness, sensitivity and responsiveness to the space and environment in which I dance. I'll be attentive to man-made, natural, indoor and outdoor features, cycles of time, and other phenomena that effect the body at subtle levels.

The dances I create during and after this period will be enriched by the time spent in solitude, investigating these elements through experiencing the life of the room and the surrounding neighborhood. This kind of exploration will ultimately deepen the dancing I share with audiences and the insights I'm able to share with students. I'm going to bring along and re-read the books Creating Sacred Space by Karen Kingston and The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard.

I'll be balancing this solo time by inviting other artists and members of the public to join me for explorations and/or small performances. I hope to create new and different kinds of performances and experiences from what I have done before.

I'm envisioning the Seattle studio as my sacred special dream-friendly house for the month. I will get to know it inch by inch, through all of my senses. One of my first activities will be to spend large amounts of time moving through the studio blindfolded, feeling my way through the dimensions and textures of the room. I'll also tune to things like sound vibrations and light: What sounds are made by moving through the room, what sounds penetrate the space from other rooms or exist within the room? Does the floor have creaky spots? What are the light sources in the room and how does that light fall on the body? How can a dance performer acknowledge and blend with these phenomena?

While the project is taking place in Seattle, I've been based in Chicago for the last 13 years or so. This residency is the perfect stepping stone to my new venture of touring, traveling and exploring the country and world as an improvising dancer-performer. In fact, prior to this residency I will be moving out of my Chicago home/studio, placing my belongings in storage with my family in North Carolina. After the residency I have arranged gigs in San Francisco and LA which will take me through to mid-September—after that, more vistas await.

Your generous support will fuel me toward greater motion and discovery!

Thank you.