ROSA: A Dance That Might Be About Roses

ROSA is an evening-length dance work for live audience and for camera that explores power in the feminine tense.

Four dancers tangle with and support one another in the real-time labor of making a dance that innovates and celebrates what it is to be a human being.

But above all, ROSA unearths the sadness and joys of being both together and alone in life's inevitable surrenders.

Rosa is dedicated to our mothers, our other-mothers, and mother Earth. Her target audience is those of us who have loved or lost a woman whom we cherish, be she a woman by birth, by identity, or both. ROSA is for those of us who ache for a more fleshy and imaginative way of dreaming and living into power in the feminine tense. 

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Our audience likes children's books for adults--think Maurice Sendak and Lynda Barry, or just picture a rainbow with thorns--and our audience doesn't shy away from gutsy divas getting a wee bit up close and personal with each other and with them. Our audience craves innovation but above all our audience craves to connect deeply with life on earth. Perhaps even to smell earth itself-- inside a darkened theatre.

Would you like to see, smell, hear, touch, and taste ROSA for yourself?

Our goal is to deliver ROSA wherever she is needed. Contact iamrosawearerosa@gmail.com for press materials and booking information.


LATEST NEWS and JUICY DEVELOPMENTS

ROSA'S Kickstarter campaign was a phenomenal success! On June 8th, we met our fundraising goal two days ahead of schedule. We have now paid our artists and the edit of ROSA has begun! Mad, delicious thanks to each of our supporters for realizing ROSA.

ROSA's Friends and Family Screening in Memphis, TN was held on October 18th at Ditty TV, 508 S. Main St., Memphis, TN 38103. Members of the ROSA team were in attendance to take questions and share stories from inside the making as we toasted and viewed ROSA for the Camera for the very first time in public, precluded by a short live performance with guest artists Paulette Regan and Maxine Starling Strawder, accompanied by Terrie Starr on keys.

ROSA is still in the making! We envision a larger and longer work that involves a prelude in collaboration with community members, a lot more spilled dirt, more room for seating on the stage since that was a huge success at our preview in Nashville, and greater emphasis on the relationships between us as dancers, as women, and as friends. Questions of how we manage our emotional enmeshment, how we let go, and how we hold space for one another continue to run through the architecture of ROSA but with greater attention to the craft of the whole.

​ROSA is forever blooming. This past July, we met in Nashville, TN for a two-day residency and ROSA REDUX, (working title,) was born. Sarah created a score for a series of duets framed as hard-working solos that explore the vulnerability of exposure and the courage to confess our need to be loved by the viewer.

​There have also been many Petals of ROSA this year: After Hours conceived and directed by Sarah, Untitled (for the Roses) conceived and directed by Bethany, and Lauren & Bethany conceived and directed by Bethany. 

​YOU can stay tuned to the working progress by clicking our CREATORS BLOG tab. We welcome your response so long as you own it as your own; we are not soliciting critical response at this stage but very much welcome your personal associations, narratives, or sharing of insights.