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I'm not interested in replicating my own body.

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Obviously, that's super not interesting for me.

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So I'm not interested in a choreographic approach
that wants to

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formalize a style in a way,

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because for each piece
I try to develop another physical logic.

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The stories that I would like to tell

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in some ways

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can only be imagined.

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For me, freedom is a tricky term and one that I don't use

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for multiple reasons

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because I often think someone's freedom
is at the expense of someone else's.

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So I rather think about entanglement and being
entangled in other people's lives

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and that might not allow for this feeling of freedom

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but I think it allows for something else.

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It's the kind of the stories that we tell
ourselves about ourselves, about the past.

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And my relationship to it is one that requires a lot of

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fiction making.

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Let's say...

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A lot of imagination, in part because
of the ghosting that has happened

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through the context of transatlantic slave trade,

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and through colonialism.

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The stories that I would like to tell in
some ways can only be imagined.

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I like to think that the body is an incredible trace

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of what our pasts are, even if they can't be articulated.

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I work with...

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quite critically with the materiality of the body

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thinking critically about what it means to be a body in the flesh

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and the histories that have determined what the flesh means

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and what it signifies for some versus others.

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A kind of broader exploration of embodiment.

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These very questions of the body and what
it means to be a body in space and time,

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but not just in the isolated situation of a studio or a theater,

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but through history and time: what
it has come to mean to be a body.

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And that can never collapse only into the present.

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I’m after something untenable, something
you can't capture with language

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otherwise I would just write a story, right?

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But I'm interested in this whole process
of what the materiality of the theater

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also invites. The audience, the
materiality of the people, the eyes,

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how those eyes are kind of shaping,

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in some ways, your perception of yourself

41
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and then how you project that back onto that

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like this kind of dynamic relation.

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And I really think of the space of the theater

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as a very relational space.

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And that's why as a dancer, as a trained
dancer, choreographer, whatever, I never...

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I don't work abstractly,

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there's this thing of addressal.

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I always address the audience in every work.

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There's always a reflection that we're here together,

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despite the fact that this fiction is unfolding before their eyes.

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I start each piece by first

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figuring the work, parts of the work, not the entire thing

53
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but I work so much from the body and from my body.

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So in order to invite people into a creation

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I have to know what I'm doing.

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And I want it to be clear.

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It has to be clear to a certain degree
because, you know, of course, once

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I invite performers in, they take that material
and they go further with it.

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That's without a doubt.

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But in the very beginning

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I always want to know what's at stake.

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Like inside of a piece. And that's my responsibility.

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When I’m in the beginning of a creative process,
like now, I actually find I’m less eloquent because

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I’m doing the weirdest shit in the studio.

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I’m doing a lot of improvisations. I feel very loopy sometimes.

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I film everything.

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I do these different processes,

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either I'll do a process with my eyes closed and it's...

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this is adopting this style of practice.

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It's called

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“authentic movement”, which is a bad name,
but it's basically moving with your eyes closed.

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And it's like these different sensorial practices that I do.

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And then I'll do something with my eyes open.

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And it's funny, different things that you think “Oh, I nailed it,

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this is what it is.” La, la, la.

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And then you're so confident with what it feels like.

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But actually you watch it and you're like,
Oh, actually, here, this is it, this is it.

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So without a doubt, I'm filming everything.

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I try to be very careful of too much talking about intimacy

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or talking about the process of a work or the meaning of a work.

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And instead I get very busy with activity.

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We're very busy throughout the day.

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Anyone that's worked with me knows that it's like a really intense

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working process and in a way that allows

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for less banter because in the banter,

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then you can start to get trapped in your own
ego and your own emotions and in your own...

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all of the kind of very boring things
that we're kind of trapped in

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in our everyday. In the process of being together

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I think that you need to have a concentrated practice to come
together in order to explore something else outside of

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someone's psychological space.

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You know, there's talking through doing, you know, often and something that doesn't feel immediately like it makes sense.

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We don't worry about it.

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I don't worry about this thing of sense
making, especially in the beginning.

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I propose a series of practices and
we keep doing we keep doing.

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And in time something emerges and we follow that trace.

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And then something else emerges. You follow that trace.

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And so it's a thing of doing and listening.

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You know, I really do start much more abstractly each work.

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Sometimes an image is haunting for me

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Or a kind of story.

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I stumble across a story about my great
grandmother, and I'm kind of fascinated.

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It requires me to think more critically about
certain things that I've taken for granted.

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And in that process of getting kind of fascinated

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by something, I start to map or kind of plot quite literally

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a series of questions for myself that I try to interrogate

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both through texts, through theoretical writing,
or dance around also in the studio

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and try to figure out, to sniff,
what it is that is kind of emerging.

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I'm not interested in creating essays,
obviously, or I really want to create

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experientially rich works that are like
really this process of worlding.

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So these worlds kind of unfold and and I really want to lean

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into the poetics of that, into creating
these kind of very resonant images,

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these kind of haunting images so that the work operates more

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on this kind of psychic level than just
the kind of logical or rational level.

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I direct through my body.

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That's why I consider myself a choreographer

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but then dancers that have traditional dance training are

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like “you work more like a director” because I

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I'm interested more in the performative qualities than the kind of

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movements themselves.

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There is this kind of intimacy that does
emerge always throughout a creation

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because of the intensity of the work
and the concentrated time frame.

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And so I guess in collaboration,
also to have multiple voices in a room,

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that's important and dynamic and interesting.

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Collaborations are beautiful because, for each creation

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this is your temporary family because
I spend more time with the people

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that are working in the production than I do with
folks in my intimate life, you know what I mean?

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Because of just the kind of hours that you're together

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and that

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is intensely beautiful, because

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you lose a sense of centralized

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containment, like you...

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you can't be... you're constantly in this
kind of space of activating sociability,

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it's very social all the time.

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So it kind of de-centers you in some ways.

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And this is also an exciting process.

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It's overwhelming, but I...

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I love it.

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It needs to grow on an ethos of sociability,

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which is to say, to find and constantly create forms

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that allow for better social relations.

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And I know that there's a post humanist turn,

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but I would like to invoke the Jamaican scholar

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Sylvia Winter, who reminds us that
there are genres of humans, right?

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And there are some genres of humans
that haven't had a chance to even be human.

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And those are the people,

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those are the folks that know best about
the land and about its resources.

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And either through forced labor or
through their own nativeness, right?

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These different genres of humans
that are entangled in each other's lives,

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regardless of whether or not they want to be.

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But we are, right? Through this kind of global reality, this world

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that is united through racial capitalism and all of its horrors.

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For me, I would like to think that what can emerge

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now is an acknowledgement of this, not to move

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beyond it, because we can't, right?

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There is no transcending history,

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the materiality of time, right?

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But we can we can dream,
of course, about what's possible.

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But I think only when we take into consideration
all the different genres of humans

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and how we can build a more equitable space

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amongst these genres of humans.

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There's so many things that have to change

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in our social realities in order to even

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believe that theater, at least theater
as we know it, is possible in 30 years.

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There’s so much that's shifting.

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I hope that there is a process of really listening and observing and,

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being fascinated by the stories that are difficult to tell.

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And I hope that those stories get to be told

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and that it's not only the privileged that get to hear those stories.

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I would like to imagine or believe

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that I will have continued to be kind of fearless in my explorations.

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I would have continued to take risks

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at the expense of success or,

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whatever the things are
that might happen in the process of creating work.

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Allow that thing that's burning inside of me,

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these like ongoing questions

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to provide a kind of ethos of working

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that I can be proud of.

