Solos

Harvest Moon 

My Cat Thomas 

Manatee - improvisation

A Bao A Qu 

Nadar Sabe Mi Llama el Agua Fria

Gypsy Dreams

Etch-a-Retro-Sketch

Cachao – a galvanized trash receptacle: directed by Stephen Kelly

Whisk 

Ranunculus 

Moki’s Wedding

A Bao A Qu II 

Patchwork Chameleon 

Manatee: Ode to My Beloved

??? (excerpt for What’s the Solution) - solo

My Story – storytelling

What’s the Solution – solo

Art is My Religion – staged reading with video projection

The Van Gogh Project

The Dream Cycle Series

Cheating at Checkers – one-act play

Time Out – one-act play

August 14th, 2022

Focus on Solo Work: Laurence Blake

I remember a distinct bit of mentoring from Laurence Blake at Cal Arts, his belief in my creativity, his belief in my ability, and dropping a seed of encouragement in the form of a prompt.  "After finishing your MFA,  focus on solo work."  It was only towards the end of my career that I saw the wisdom in this, and to this day, I do believe my favorite form is solo work.

The reason why feels too sacred somehow to utter.

I learned of the cathartic nature of this type of work, and if an artist has the courage to be transformed by the process of creation, this alchemical energy will be experienced by witnesses with the potential of cathartic release for the witness.

Powerful and potent medicine.

Without knowing much about shamanism I used the phrase to describe the work as "cultural shamanism".

The work was ahead of the times, and at that time, the intention was to harness the power of dance for "shadow work", which 30 years later, seems to be a part of the mainstream awareness in the realm of trauma and recovery.

It was not at the time I was diving into invention, healing, and authenticity.

Forward thinking, ground breaking, and seeing into the future.

Thank you ancestors for this gift!

Encouraging words

 I was very much moved by the solo work of Peggy Baker, Daniel Nagrin, Margie Gillis, whose work I encountered in the academic orbit of dancing at UCSB and Cal Arts.  I found it to be true, that artists who arenʻt local to oneʻs own town, often see a person in a way that the locals do not, and this type of seeing and verbal feedback planted seeds of hope in settings where I was perpetually behind other students technically having begun my formal dance training at the late age of 28. 

Peggy Baker

I will never forget, after one workshop, after sharing phrases from a prompt to create something no one has ever seen before, sharing the inventions that came to me, Peggy Baker expressed "you have what the rest of us are hoping to find." 

Margie Gillis

After Margie Gillisʻs masterclass, she conveyed to me, if you can find out how to shape your movement, you will have something extraordinary. 

Bebe Miller

At Cal Arts Bebe Miller came to the MFA first-year studentsʻ classes to see our works in progress for our MFAI first semester concert, in which, we were all assigned solos. She articulated that she was riveted from the moment I began to perform, to the very end, and that this was very rare for her, and she also communicated the work needed to be edited. 

Pruning and Severe Edits

From Bebe, I learned the value of letting the dance grow, and say as much as needed to be said, to let it rest, then go in, and be without a care with the pruning shears. At times I would bury the whole dance and begin again, which I found, created a sort of underpainting for the work. While the first impressions werenʻt visible, the memory existed within the final form. 

Body Memory and Physical Commitment

It was from Peggy Baker that I learned the importance of repetition in dance, to get it into oneʻs body, and to gain the body memory, and how incredibly labor intensive it is in terms of developing material and bringing the material into a first rough draft, roughly 40 hours in the studio, for eight minutes of solid choreography. Back when I was renting space, that was a $600 investment in the space alone, not to mention, travel costs, costume costs, theater or studio costs for shows. Why do we do this? Why do dancers still make dances? Why did I feel I must do it? Dance in such a way.

August 16th, 2022

I asked my insides for a ceremony of thanks for these people and something simple emerged. Before our evening swims at the beach I write their names in the sand, and chant a gratitude chant, and express my gratitude, and give their names to the incoming tides asking for blessings for these beautiful seed planters