My creative research unfolds through collaborative, interdisciplinary practices, to connect individuals and communities across personal and geographical borders. A major focus is using movement and the body to investigate issues and themes relevant to underrepresented communities and experiences. My MFA thesis work examined The American Dream through the community of Flint, Michigan and that city's social, cultural, and racial politics and history. My most recent endeavor in movement research contends with womanhood and motherhood as an experience lived in and through the body, and works to deconstruct social norms as they relate to motherhood, creativity, and the body.
selected works
FOR STAGE + FILM
AND LET’S GO (2020)
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA - DANCERS IN COMPANY
A meditation on preparation and an ode to movement as both art and state of being, this work celebrates movement as cultural expression through community. It embraces athleticism, rigor, and play as integral components of a rich movement experience. I was inspired by my toddler son’s joyful exploration of movement, and my own curiosity around nurturing one human’s love of moving while also cultivating a career out of those same principles. And Let’s Go features music by the Hawkeye Marching Band Drumline.
“...An energetic work...the dancers looked like they were warming up for a sporting event as they stretched, leapt, and kicked, capturing in every movement the pure athleticism of dance.”
“Hawkeye pride could not have been more alive than within the UI Dance Company’s first performance, “And Let’s Go.”... Sporting black and gold, the dancers owned the stage. Their dance movements emulated band instruments through rhythmic clapping and followed formations typically seen by the marching band.”
Borrowed earth (2019)
The University of Iowa - Dancers in company
Framed by elements of ritual and meditation, Borrowed Earth charges the dancers with engaging in empathy through performance. Spontaneous composition through improvisational scores is utilized in contrast with choreographed movement to cultivate community through listening, attention, and a shared embodied learning. The work contends with issues of position and identity, as well as ideas surrounding community and togetherness, and the notion of “taking ground” as an opportunity to make space for individual voices to build collective strength.
Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning
MFA Thesis Project - The University of Iowa
The Flint Project, started in May, 2014, is a multi-media dance project that investigates the American Dream in relation to the intersection of social, cultural, and racial politics and history in the community of Flint, Michigan. The culminating dance work, Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning premiered in early April, 2015, at Space Place Theater at the University of Iowa. Part of the research process for this project is documented on this site's blog.
your body and its bones
The university of iowa department of dance
Taking its title from a line in an e.e. cummings poem, this work addresses intimacy and power dynamics in relationships. A dual performance on the stage and screen highlights unseen forces and the roles they play in defining a relationship. This work was also developed into a short film and was selected for screening at various film festivals in the United States.
Dance Shorts Film Festival finalist (Tampa, Florida) in April, 2014; Invited to perform on the closing concert of the Detroit Dance City Festival (Detroit, Michigan) in August, 2014; Screened at the Movies by Movers film festival (Boone, North Carolina) in November, 2014; Selected by the University of Iowa Department of Dance faculty to represent the department at the American College Dance Association North Central Festival in Ames, Iowa in March, 2015.
The Lesson
The University of Iowa Department of Dance
A solo that is not really a solo; a duet that is not quite a duet; The Lesson was born out of a prompt from a teacher who told me to “fail.” In partnership with my husband, Eric Bush, this work was my first foray into dance as comedy and explicit narrative. A dancer, dissatisfied with her attempts to own the ballet barre and the attention of the musician who accompanies her, takes matters into her own hands…and fails miserably.
ongoing and current research: The Motherload
My most recent endeavor in movement research contends with womanhood and motherhood as an experience lived in and through the body, and works to deconstruct social norms as they relate to motherhood, creativity, and the body. Drawing on my own experiences in motherhood and art-making, and in partnership with a collective of artist-mothers (and in some cases, their children), I am working to unpack this complex human experience while also bringing visibility to the challenges of taking it on within the parameters set up by institutions in art/dance, education, and more.