DUST

Artist Statement:
In 1993, with director Margaret Williams, I created “Outside In” a dance for camera. made for CandoCo, a UK based physically integrated company, this piece has been broadcast around the world and has contributed to a larger awareness of physically integrated dance as a viable artistic enterprise. CandoCo is now internationally known and has in many ways set the template for looking at differently-abled bodies as dancers. This past year, I returned to thinking about bodies that challenge our ideas about normality and ability, and created a solo work for Homer Avila, a virtuoso modern dancer who lost his leg and hip to cancer. This work flaunted his virtuosity in the face of his apparent “disability,” and simultaneously revealed him quietly looking at us, looking at him. I consider it a great honor and privilege to continue my work with AXIS Dance Company.

I am interested in working with bodies that break down the conventions of virtuosity in professional dance and leave us with subjectivity and with questions about “power” (who gets to have it and how it gets used.)

For AXIS, I want to create a work that takes the omni-present (but usually tacit) subject of representation (the way a person is revealed to an audience), and put it front and center. I want to make a choreo-portrait of this group that doesn’t necessarily work through personal narrative, but works to shift the viewer’s experience of who the performer’s are. Among the ideas that I would like to explore initially, are the notion of “display” and the sense of the body, like breath and weight. Wherever we begin, I rely upon my attention to the moment and to what is going on in a room with the dancers, to find my way toward an accurate and challenging experience of “re-representation.”

Dust (2003)
Choreography: Victoria Marks in collaboration with the performers
Dancers: AXIS Dance Company
Music: composed and performed by Eve Beglarian
Lighting Design: Eileen Cooley
Costume Design: Mario Alonzo