I often get asked what kind of work I do. Am I a choreographer? A scholar? A teacher? A technologist? A writer? I usually say yes to all of them, not because I wear many hats, but because I see all of it as dance. Dance is the thread that moves through everything I do: from creating choreography for stages and street corners, to co-designing XR experiences, to writing books and mentoring.
So, my dance practice unfolds in many forms: live performance, film, installation, Augmented Reality, and text. I feel so lucky, this leads me to move with so many kinds of people: with professional dancers, children and their parents, with women in low-wage work, and with architecture students on construction sites. I feel privileged to dance in community gardens, in museum corridors, in gallery spaces, and shoreline gatherings. What holds it all together for me, is a belief that dance is a way of being in relationship with…with memory, with land, with others, and with the stories that live in our bodies.
I draw from Afro-Indigenous ways of knowing and being. These led me to feel movement is a way of noticing, listening to, Being-in-Place, and where knowledge is shared through Being with… To me, dance is a living archive. Whether I’m writing, choreographing, or building digital tools, I’m interested in how we move together, physically, socially, and politically.
Yes, I am many, Yes we is many, and that is the amazing potential of possibility I hope my students see for their artistic practices and for their professional futures.