Practices
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Gathering
Gathering practices are about the crafting and facilitation of human-centered spaces in which we ask: “what is alive for each of us, and what needs to be named in this place, at this moment, with these people.” Gathering practices take form of workshops, facilitated circles, ticketed events, teaching, organizing and social practice projects.
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Transmission
Transmission practices are about reflecting, synthesizing, communicating and creating meaning out of the interstitial spaces between projects, somatic experiences and ideas. Transmission practices take the form of writing, speaking, presenting or teaching.
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Body
Body practices are about sourcing and processing experience and knowledge through the body — the common thread of connection that runs through all projects and practices. Body practices, whether in movement or in stillness, center the experience of the body in multiple ways: within a relational context, as a site of individual complexity, or as a lens through which a deep awareness of internal landscapes can be sensed.
Gathering
“The way we gather matters…the conscious bringing together of people for a reason — shapes the way we think, feel and make sense of our world” - Priya Parker
The practice of gathering and facilitation lives in the construction of every performance project, the way we begin and end each workshop, the embodied architecture of every hosted event, and the awareness of the commonalities and the unbridgeable gaps inherent in every facilitated group. My own practice of gathering is not underwritten by any single training or method, but rather through more than twenty years of professional experience as a performance maker; my work as a co-facilitator of gatherings in multi-year projects with diverse coalitions across lines of difference such as Southern Futures at Carolina Performing Arts, The Parkinson’s Performance Project, and Barn Church; it is in my teaching experience at festivals, studios and in higher education around the world, and my experience in navigating power dynamics both within institutional structures as well as beyond them, in theaters, universities and in the decades-long experiment in radical international collectivity: Sweet and Tender Collaborations. My facilitation of gatherings is informed by both my experience as well as through my ongoing study of modalities that require a commitment to Presence, notably: Aikido, Non-Violent Communication, Inner-Relationship Focusing and Generative Somatics. I make mistakes in my gathering and facilitation practices. I am still learning. I consider each gathering to be an embodied, emergent, and creative process that asks: what is alive between us right now?
Video excerpts from the project: BLOC (2025). Video by Iximche Media
photo by Myra Weise
Transmission
The root of my transmission practice is reflection on and communication of that which is experienced somatically. As such an emergent process is experienced first and foremost through my body, the act of writing and presenting is often a later phase, wherein I aim to craft meaning that can be experienced in more direct spoken or written language that interweaves the poetic with the analytical. Sometimes this is a solitary process, as in earlier writings or presentations I have created for publications such as Movement Research’s Performance Journal or INDYWEEK. More recently, it has been a collaborative process. These collaborative transmission practices have appeared together with Murielle Elizéon at international humanitarian conferences such as Switchpoint, or in academic settings such as at Duke University, The University of North Carolina, or at the 2024 Nordic Geographer’s Meeting in Copenhagen with Drs. Cortland Gilliam and Elizabeth Olson. Together with Dr. Olson and Dr. Gilliam, our ongoing collaborative reflection and writing practice has appeared in the publication of books such as Critical University Studies and Performance (Vanderbilt Press, 2025).
Body
Body is the through-line of my work, not as subject, but rather as the lens through which research, processing and meaning takes place. The body is not only the site for sourcing knowledge and perceiving the external world, but it is the instrument through which we perceive the inner world, and the site at which immense social and political forces land. My body practices are rooted in decades of experience as a contemporary dancer and choreographer, my basic study of voice techniques such as the Lopez-Barrantes method and my study of Generative Somatics. Relational body practices are also informed by my years of studying the Japanese martial art of Aikido (translated as ‘the way of harmonizing life energy’). Finally, my practice of Inner Relationship Focusing, in which I am a Certified Focusing Professional and a Certified Focusing Trainer, is a method of sensing deeply inward through our bodies to better know the complexity of our inner worlds. These practices show up in my art making, my facilitation with group and individual sessions. The intersectional body is the place where politics, history, place, imagination and our basic humanity meet in rich complexity.
photo: Anna Maynard
