Research/Writings

My biggest passion is research, primarily the Praxis of Dance. I question and contemplate how the theory and practice of dance can work together and produce work that furthers our knowledge of this Art, and our humanity. I believe this is the most interesting and revolutionary work of our time. It is a work and study that deals primarily with our body, our flesh--that which is timeless and ephemeral, and immaterial.   


"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. " -Merce Cunningham


My continued research is about the House of Light: Decolonization of ourselves, our dance; and, Fierceness: a complete understanding, acceptance, projection, performance and fabulousity of ourselves. My company and my work focus deeply on these subjects.

My Methods are: poetry, psychokinetic visualization process, RSVP cycle, playwrighting, movement research improvisation, observation of my life, speaking with my peer and community, academic literature review, and various other composition techniques.

The following are some works I have produced...more shall be added soon...     


STANFORD HONORS THESIS:
The Doing of Vogue: LGBT Black & Latina/o Ballroom subculture, Voguing’s Embodied Fierceness, and The Making of a Quare World on Stage


PDF-THE DOING OF VOGUE



ABSTRACT:

In the 1990’s, pop-star Madonna popularized a dance style and form known as “Vogue” or “Voguing”. This dance, originally called “Presentation”, and then “Performance”, had been a part of the Gay, Black and Latina/o Ball scene since the 1940’s. The Ball scene itself being a subculture centered around performance art competitions. Previous scholarship on voguing has analyzed the dance’s rules, choreographic elements, and has emphasized the individual dancer’s performances. This study expands the optics of analysis to the investigation of the embodied knowledge that underlay the composition of the dance itself. Focusing analysis on seven Balls attended Chicago, IL and San Francisco, CA, public information from the community’s websites, YouTube documentaries, and grass-roots recorded Ball production, I attempt to look into the aesthetics of voguing and the Ball to analyze the importance of the most endearing aspect of the Ball: Fierceness. In addition, this study concludes its work with an artistic endeavor, to experiment with the praxis of Fierceness, and put voguing on stage; creating a dance-theater work titled, The Voguette.









MILLS COLLEGE MASTER OF FINE ARTS THESIS: 
MITOTE: A Manifesto for Avant-Garde Dance Written In Indigenous Knowledge

PDF -MITOTE 

 

ABSTRACT: 

Applying an Indigenous perspective to conventional ‘western’ scholarship, this paper proposes a dance praxis entitled Mitote, which seeks to produce an Indigenous dance process of decolonization for Indigenous liberation and empowerment. This document serves as a starting point for the evolution of contemporary Indigenous dance work that respects Indigenous land and protocols of cultural production, yet is innovative, avant-garde, and modern. Under the premise that modern dance is intimately related to traditional Indigenous dance, this project proposes a process for the decolonization of contemporary modern dance.  Ultimately, it provides a means to lift the ideology of “the Natives as the static past” and place them into the present and innovative future. Held as a living, growing, and developing research document cataloguing this author’s own artistic process, this paper is only a short beginning of a life’s work, practice, research, and creation.