Blog

For the past two years I have been devoting my creative energy to harvesting, remembering, and performing movement based on encounters with my environment. I began this pursuit for many reasons, yet the primary motivation was the desire to build a more-detailed, visceral map of the world through direct experience.

My art practice has recently taken another step forward with the development of the Somatic Natural History Archive. My interactions with different environments has become more focused, as I explore how specific plants and animals express themselves in relationship to their particular environmental contexts.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past several weeks I have been exploring a priming procedure with those who attend my offerings.

Essentially, I begin by stating a series of relationships in the hopes of inspiring awareness.

These include physical relationships (remember you are standing on concrete), social (remember you are a citizen of this community), psychological (remember that you are remembering), and environmental (remember that you are breathing oxygen that was produced by the plant life in this room). Read the rest of this entry »

It seems to me that there are two paths that a professional artist travels.

1. The Art Path
Where you follow intuition to manifest latent truths
Where you clear space for discovery
Where you can decide what to do and how long to do it
Where you ask yourself what you value

2. The Career Path
Where you proactively connect your creations with people/communities
Where you are told what others find meaningful in your work
Where you work within the timelines of others
Where you ask others what they value

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I went to a lecture by minimalist sculptor Susan York at the College of Santa Fe. York makes large-scale sculptural installations out of graphite. She is very interested in the energetic state created by engaging with her work.

At one point she had us close our eyes and then open them abruptly. She drew our attention to the emptiness in our minds at the initial moment of visual perception. She likened this to the vision of an infant. She later stated that drawing attention to this mental void was one of her objectives in her work.

For months I have been wanting to develop a series of easy scores that people I can do with people  at cocktail parties; scores that provide the experience of engaging with my work.

I thought I would give it a go today: Read the rest of this entry »

I performed tonight in Santa Fe on a mixed-bill choreography showcase, and I felt the concepts I was working with could just as easily been coming from another country. I did some things that I find to be pretty common in NYC dance. I looked at my audience, I left space in my score for nothing to happen on stage, I limited my movements to only those necessary, and did nothing to inspire envy of real or feigned athletic prowess.

Their kind, yet shell-shocked faces, led me to wonder…

Should NYC contemporary dance be billed as ethnic dance when presented outside of NYC?

I have been catching up on the writings/theories of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Beuys.

Each in their own right challenged contemporary artists to reconsider their broader role in society.

I have long believed that movements artists/dancers offer us new visions for how people can relate to each other. The stage can be approached as an incubator for social behavior.

I am creating scores that Read the rest of this entry »

i am in Santa Fe (NM) for a three-month residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute.
i am having a blast exploring the landscape and making new friends.
i am also learning about how my art practice does and does not integrate with the visual arts world.
i am learning the differences between performance art and performing arts (material of the body, time, historical context). Read the rest of this entry »