There are privileges to being a dance artist in the urban South. One of them is the fact of working in obscurity, even oblivion. Bethany Wells Bak, Erin D.H. Williams, and I with three assistants shared works in progress on May 1 with a handful of attentive observers and a bigger handful of unwitting passersby. we would love to know how to critique ourselves, but we were inside the works themselves. Such a curiosity, this environment...fellow dance artists are all too kind, and friends and family are generally left speechless, but even when they are able to speak, it isn't with the kind of need or demand required. I want someone who needs dance to matter and who has invested their life in its study to tell me where I'm falling and where I'm on. For now, it's onward to the next release in Portland in July.
I'll be taking my solo portion from the Cooper Young showing, with three assistants, and letting it develop more from the point I ended it here. Nat will again be my assist, and we will have to cast two more there in Oregon, almost on the spot. I'm excited.
Bethany and Erin brought an incredible amount of personality to their roles, and trust. I think both had a lot of questions still lingering after the performance, and I want to address those in interviews I'll conduct with them individually. Lots of material to come here on the wordbelly blog.

Thank you so much for checking in, friends. More below from an artist doing research into embodiment, the skin container, wild spaces we live in... Thanks Paulette...You posted this in a comment to the site so I endeavor to preserve your form.



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blue wool yarn transforms waste space into mine, wound around a laurel tree and two leaning fences, connected to old doghouse, and open above and to the western sky. Here I move in and outside my perimeter, and consider my intent, It smells of pine and decay, so I pick up sticks and sing , "This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on my thumb....." I am a child in a grown, crone's body, ....fairy toed cow girl, Pippi Longstockings combined with Annie Oakley. Urbane grime and dirty roots combine. Here I am hidden, but as I scramble to enter, the dogs across the alley hear me and bark. We peer narrowly to follow shadows and tracings,., silence and stillness, listening, being, alert. I enjoy being here at dusk, am having a little spider nervousness and wonder as my eyes adjust.

I wrote that title with a smirk on my face I have to admit. Where is such a thing to be found? Well, my mother and I are at work, for you, to see that such a thing shall exist. I feel it is very much needed.

If you just dropped in on this site you may wonder what I'm doing here. I'm engaging big questions with tiny dances. Those tiny dances are accumulating into a larger Wild Thing, whose nature is revealed only in parts along the way.

Stay tuned, dears, for the first clip from Jeri Ledbetter and moi, as we undertake to understand one another as artists working in very different generations and media.

Here's a note she squiggled on her ipad and sent over one day last year. Yep, that's her real handwriting, folks!!

Last night Bethany, Erin and I shared some views into the worlds of our meat space. We were supported by many beautiful viewers and a handful of helpers. We learned something, we got dirty, and we sparked some questions and conversations. In the coming weeks I will be posting some photos and sharing some of the post-mortem. 

We're also going to be breaking down our nest-cages.

what is this all about, you might ask? I'm going to be doing  some interviews with my mom as we work to digest and unpack. She is a visual artist par excellence, but she really hasn't a clue what all this is about. Should be a juicy exchange.

Thank you so much for reading and caring. Here you've been exposed to the inner workings, so perhaps it hasn't made sense to you either; all the more so do I appreciate your curiosity and patience down the line.