Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

i make things and am interested in what bodies do. i believe language is tricky, thoughts are powerful, and that people are most beautiful when looking up. i am an interdisciplinary dance artist whose individual and collaborative works re-articulate and collide specific western choreographic practices with the politics of daily life so as to interrupt fixed notions of queer Black embodiment, desire, and survival.

While at Headlands

While at Headlands, i will begin research into new work that takes up the idea of somatics and the “commons” from the perspective of practices and sites of Black sovereignty, both historical and speculative, forced and voluntary. Underlying this is a desire to find connections across seemingly opposite ideas. What is a Black commons, and how might it exist inside the violent pluralistic ideologies that continue to drive and shape the US? What does solitude have to do with solidarity? What does sovereignty mean in and across bodies and in the context of occupied stolen land? What do somatic practices rooted in the white lineages of post-modern and contemporary dance have to do with blackness? How does going outside (an idea) help one get in? i also hope to be joined by a collaborator for a portion of this residency to develop these ideas and questions further.

Selected Work

Decomposition of a Continuous Whole, 2009; solo performance; created as part of Three Women for Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles, CA

Composite Fields, 2015; three channel video installation of a performance created in collaboration with Yann Novak; created for TEMPERAMENTAL, curated by Erin Silver, Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough

evereachmore, 2015; group performance with dancers including: Joy Angela Anderson, Heyward Bracey, Rebecca Bruno, Fonzy Cervera, Erin Christovale, Loren Fenton, Kloii Hollis, Maria Maea, Jas Michelle, Meena Murugesan, taisha paggett, Sebastian Peters-Lazaro, Kristianne Salcines, .Turay, Devika Wickremesinghe, Suné Woods; created for Clockshop for the Bowtie Parcel at The LA River, Los Angeles, CA

Decomposition of a Mutable Landscape, 2016; solo performance; created for DECOMPOSITIONS: 3 performance works by taisha paggett, Kabir Carter and Yvonne Rainer, XMPL Theater, University of California, Irvine

counts orchestrate, a meadow (or weekly practice with breath), 2018; group performance with dancers including: Heyward Bracey, Meena Murugesan, Catherine Scott, Jas Michelle, taisha paggett, Anna Martine Whitehead, Suné Woods, .Turay; created for Made in LA 2018, curated by Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

i believe in echoes, 2018; solo performance, costume by James Kidd; created for Made in LA 2018, curated by Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA