Dancer Teacher Choreographer

When my friend Patricia passed away from cancer, her last wish was that I dance at her funeral. I choreographed Chopin for Patricia to perform at her ceremony in the chapel of Père Lachaise in Paris. It was a seed Patricia planted, this last request for a dance. And like a seed that flowers and spreads, Chopin for Patricia has continued to grow. Click the button below to watch it performed by the beautiful Lilly Meyer. 

 In 1967, dancer Marta Becket was on tour when her bus broke down in Death Valley, California. While waiting for repairs, she walked through the nearly abandoned town of Death Valley Junction. She looked through a hole in one of the buildings and discovered a stage. It was love at first sight. Marta never left. She performed on that stage, en pointe, until she was 80. In the Western world, our dances tend to idealize the youthful body. While I never had the chance to meet Marta in life, this film allowed us to connect across time. It became a conversation about what it means to grow older, especially as a dancer. There is ageism in dance, and that's a shame because it limits our understanding of the art form. The fact that the body is impermanent makes our use of it as our instrument of expression a demand for social change on the perception of aging. The body's impermanence, in strength and decline, is why dance is beautiful. We won't have our bodies forever. It is what we do with our time in them that counts. Marta and I dance our Dying Swan, which isn't a swan song. It is our transformation into the storytellers we were born to be.

April 7-May 5, 2024

Berlin is an inspiring place. The architecture really pushed my way of thinking of form and how form has a voice that tells a story of a place and time.
But also how form can be reimagined to create a new narrative.

But above all, there is Lake Studios Berlin and the other residents who were always willing to share their practices, their experience and their honest input. And then there is this incredible audience that is willing to travel to the edge of Berlin to support the unfinished work of artists…even staying until 11 at night to give feedback! It is so generous!  They taught me that the creative process can be a shared and collective experience. My mind has opened. My world has changed.