Biography
I was born in Cleveland Ohio. For the past 25+ years, I have lived in New York City. I consider myself an urban dweller who is still thrilled by the dynamic energy of the city but also craves the mountains, oceans, meadows, canyons, rivers, lakes and forests and quiet reverie of sunrise mornings on the trail. I spent part of my childhood in Colorado where summers were spent camping in the Rocky Mountains. My family drove over fantastic mountain passes and then set up camp along wet slippery rivers. We shared in the love of the outdoors and the camaraderie of being together atop panoramic gorgeous vistas. There is a framed photo at my father’s country home in Holmes County Ohio of my parents and me and my two sisters sitting in the back of a truck waiting to take us up the mountain trail of some hike. We all look so vibrantly happy - each expression bursting with excitement. A perfect moment captured forever. I love this photograph of my family. I love it.
I have always wanted a creative life. And sometimes I have achieved that idea for my existence – a raw desperate need to fulfill my inner intuition that considers a wide swath of sounds, colors, patterns, rhythms, words, lines, shapes, speeds, drama, expression, abstraction. I cannot stop the flow of my ideas for creating works of art. They are always with me. And I understood that at a very young age. Growing up there was no doubt in my mind that I would work in the arts. I just accepted what I knew was inevitable.
I am now a New York City based dance artist who used to perform and now makes choreographic works for live performance. Before coming to New York City, I studied piano performance at The Cleveland Institute of Music. I left the conservatory after 2 years to study film at New York University (BFA). I began dancing shortly after graduating – then and there I devoted my life to becoming a dancer. I would exist in a kind of desperate haze after taking a beginner modern dance class, wishing that I could be a dancer and use my body to create pathways of movement in time and space. So I allowed myself to follow this yearning. I knew that to deny myself this profound swelling desire to dance would be to deny a part of my existence. I took dance class six days a week at the Merce Cunningham Studio - sometimes two classes a day. I also studied ballet and other modern dance techniques. I then studied dance at SUNY Brockport (MFA) where I began to choreograph. All three disciplines - music, film and dance - have jointly influenced my process and artistic aesthetic when creating movement based live performance. My first dance work I created at Brockport, SUPERBLASTER, was selected for the National American College Dance Festival performed at The Kennedy Center. I then received the first Martha Myers scholarship to study choreography at the American Dance Festival in Durham NC. Those early experiences and opportunities provided profound confidence in my ideas.
But when I graduated from Brockport, I wanted to return to New York City and work as a dancer for a few years to have the experience that I so craved when I made the decision to dance. So that’s what I did.
As a performer I have appeared in the revival of Meredith Monk’s QUARRY at the Spoleto Festival and in AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY on Roosevelt Island, Susan Marshall’s SPECTATORS AT AN EVENT at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, and with Brenda Angiel and Myriam Herve-Gil at the American Dance Festival. I danced with Randy James Dance Works for 3 years. I was a member of Troika Ranch for seven years, creating roles in 5 evening length works that utilized live interaction between performer and digital media. With Troika Ranch I had the opportunity to travel to many cities in the United States as well as Monaco, The United Kingdom, Germany and France. After leaving Troika Ranch, I performed with Kota Yamazaki Fluid Hug-Hug at the TBA Festival in Portland, OR and in Singapore, Ping Chong at La MaMa and again with Meredith Monk at the Guggenheim Museum recreating sections from her 1969 site-specific work JUICE.
But all the while I was performing other artist’s work, I felt my own choreographic voice reminding me that I wanted to make my own work. I started The Mill to develop my own live performances.
In New York, my work has been presented twice by Movement Research at the Judson Church and also at Dixon Place, the 92nd Street Y, Dancenow/NYC/The Festival at Joyce Soho and Dance Theater Workshop and at La Mama for La Mama Moves Dance Festival. I presented work at the Merce Cunningham Studio in December 2004 in a shared program, returning in 2006 for a full evening of my own choreography. My first evening-length work, ALONE OH, with original music composed by Bessie Award winning composer Guy Yarden, premiered at CPR Center for Performance Research in January 2010. In 2012 I premiered THE WILD HEART - with video design by Nic Petry of Dancing Camera and sound design by Bobby McElver of The Wooster Group - in 3 of the large galleries at Gavin Brown’s enterprise. CHOREOGRAPHY (2014) was presented by The Knockdown Center, a 50,000 square foot former steel door factory, as part of their inaugural season and continued my collaboration with Bobby McElver and Nic Petry. I was a recipient of a 2013 Fellow in Choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts and was awarded a 2014 Project Space Residency through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. In 2016 I traveled to Goucher College near Baltimore MD as a guest artist setting a 33 minute dance on the students in 10 days.
It all sounds okay on paper. But the truth is that I have never been able to make any kind of living making my art. New York City is very expensive. And the rejections for grants, residencies, presenting seasons have far outweighed the acknowledgements. I have always worked arts admin jobs to support myself and to provide extra funding to pay for the work. For the past 10.5 years I have worked at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, a contemporary fine art gallery. Although this was not what I envisioned for myself as a young 18 year old on his way to Cleveland to study piano, I am very grateful for the experiences and knowledge I have acquired working as an arts administrator.
I started hiking about 3 years ago. I read journals of thru hikers, researched gear and trails and began to hike upstate New York on the Appalachian Trail. I am very much a novice. But I love being on the trail. I love the challenges, the peaceful quiet and the changes of each step that take you forward on the journey. In 2016, I hiked a section of the Colorado Trail with my sister and her husband. The altitude was very hard on me. But that experience taught me that I am stronger than I thought and even in moments of humiliating weakness, I made it through and now look back with such sweet longing for the trail high up on the passes of the Rocky Mountains.
I turned 50 last year and suddenly I felt that life was becoming shorter and shorter. To remain in New York City, working at GBE, making another dance seemed like staying in the same place – a routine that magnified a desperate need for change. And I want to move forward. I want to have changing steps take me places I have never been before – to see lands that overwhelm my senses and meet people that share an adventurous spirit. I have never shied away from taking risks. When I had just graduated from NYU Film School, I took a job as a film location agent. I was miserable. I left after 7 weeks. I traveled to Seattle to visit my younger sister and then returned to New York City with $50.00 in my pocket. But I found a job working as an arts administrator for a modern dance company and it changed my life. I became a dancer and then a choreographer. That never would have happened had I not taken the leap into the unknown.
And now at 50 I am again taking another leap into the unknown. I am leaving New York City for a time to attempt a 2018 thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. With each step I will move forward in my life while also considering every step I have already taken.
I just jumped out in the open
Without knowing if my parachute would save me
It's quiet and peaceful
In this emotional nirvana blue
- hooverphonic