Photo:  Pam White;  Sculpture:  Gillian Jagger

I will be performing on June 28 as part of the Body-Mind Centering Association conference at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.  The performance is billed as “a showcase of somatic choreographers.”  I am not sure what that means, and there seems to be some disagreement online.

For the moment, I am liking what Barbara Mahler, from the Naropa Institute has to say about it: “I believe we, as a culture, have come to think of somatic work as having a loose and undefined physicality, as well as the opposite, which is dance as a conglomerate of outer-worldly movements and contortions, acrobatics and legs wrapping around one’s head. That is not all there is to choreography, dancing and performance.  For me, choreography has form, structure time, design, composition, emotion, perspective, clarity, movement invention, and rigor; and the many parts make up a whole.”

I will be performing the full-length version of SPEAK, which is rooted in my curiosity about language and the absence of language in its usual form.  It was sparked by work with my autistic godson and some physical research into aphasia, apraxia and synesthesia.  In the dance, I obsessively manipulate a number of bodily “languages:” gestural, postural, spatial and dynamic.  Are somatics a part of that?  Absolutely.  Was that my point of entry in making the dance?  Absolutely not.  Could somatics be a point of entry for making a dance?  Absolutely.  Do somatic explorations thread their way through my dancemaking practice?  Absolutely.

I will be sharing the program with Veena Chandra, Chrissy Nelson, Elaine Colandrea, Kate Morgan and a film by Lauren Kearns.  Should be a lovely evening.  Contact me to inquire about tickets.

Photo:  Pam White, from The Traveler by Paula Josa-Jones

Making solo work can be lonely.  In the studio I am alone. This is new for me, always the director, always in the company of interpreters (dancers) of my visions. Now I have set my feet on a new path – making a suite of solo dances that will premiere next year.  It is scary, exhilarating, necessary and as I said, often lonely.

During my February residency at the  Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, there was the collegial support – shared meals where we could diffuse the intensity of a day spent alone with our work.  There was something reassuring and playful so that making the journey back into the studio the next day felt more of a shared journey.

One of the solo dances I am building, The Traveler, is about a character who is similarly alone – journeying through perilous landscapes, finding and losing balance as the terrain shifts and buckles.  Besides the movement, I am making film, working with a projectiion designer, pushing into new visual landscapes.

I have not been sharing images or news about the work.  It has felt important to hold it, to let it grow like mushrooms in the dark, the quiet, the damp.  I am reminded of this by Mary Oliver: