SECOND YEAR REVIEW

WRITTEN IN SPRING 2026 AS A PART OF MY ANNUAL REVIEW AT UIUC:

I want to start this review by telling you all a bit about this dance I made in St. Louis over winter break. I want to start here because it feels like the culmination of what I have learned in my first half of grad school. I kept telling people that this was the dance I wanted to make a year ago but didn’t have the tools yet; my time in this program gave me those tools. This year we doubled our audience with two sold out shows and I was able to hire 13 dancers. I also want to add that I started developing this work in Tere’s comp class last spring and built many of the scores and systems of this work in my Grad Process Project with Anna, Lena, Ella, and Dom over the last year. Anna Brady was also a member of the cast in St. Louis. Melissa Miller wrote a wonderful review about the work and my dear friend and collaborator Zoe DeYoung wrote a bit about what it is like to work inside of my process. I know you all want to hear from me so here we go, dyke devotions in my own words… 

Themes of sexuality and Catholicism have been emerging since I started this program and are two subjects that I have accepted may always be a layer of my work. somewhat paradoxical pillars of myself became the crux of this work. Competition dance is all over this work. I see it as the ultimate commodification of dance and exploitation of the body, yet I am obsessed with its aesthetics and its repercussions on myself and the dancers I am working with. I problematize its structures. This shows up through attempts at perfect unison, over the top theatricality, and pushing the physicality of the work to an extreme. Then, all of these methods exist alongside movement that is more about the body and less about what the body can do – extreme slowness, scores about your insides wringing, contact with another human being and the negotiation required of that, an openness to follow your gut and get lost in the movement, a fluid sense of malleability. 

I work collaboratively with both the people in the room and the essence of everyone I have ever worked with. We often start from a place that is improvisational. I need to get to know everyone on a movement level before I am able to make anything. The dancers express themselves then I sculpt it. My way of working is radically open to being shaped by the energy in the room; as cheesy as it sounds, I let my intuition guide me. If I see two people consistently being drawn to one another in these improvisations we set aside time to make a duet, if I am working with someone who I don’t know well and want to know better boom you get a solo, if something keeps going wrong it becomes a part of the work. I am not precious in the making, but that is not because I do not care. On the contrary, I care deeply. What I care about is the process and the people. OKAY FINE I CARE ABOUT THE PRODUCT TOO! But, in putting so much care into the process and the people, the product is something active, and bustling, and magicccccccc as opposed to something so produced it is stagnant. In making this work, I realized I no longer cared so much about people getting it. I am not ignorant to the fact that this letting go of people getting it is aligned with a sort of letting go of people getting me. 

I have been DANCING!!!!!!!! I am feeling a cacophony of moves in my bones! This year I have had the privilege of dancing in Juli, Nik, and Maggie’s theses. Woah! Taking so much away from each, but let’s go rapid fire mode… Juli’s decent score will stay with me always and forever, Nik’s ability to take big virtuosic MOVES and weave them into choreography is brilliant, Maggie’s specificity and the way she guides us to it has given me a crash course in directing. I’ve also continued working with Jennifer on some ideas we started last year. This movement makes me feel like I am coming home in some way, like it is how I was always meant to move. There is such a specificity and inventiveness to both the scores and the sculpting of them into set phrase work that has inspired my practice in huge ways. I am embracing that I not only love Ballet but also that I am good at it. HELLO!!!! I am good at Ballet! I’m working on my Yoga Teacher Training and I was sort of hating it but now I am sort of liking it and I think maybe one day I will love it. 

Writing feels good these days. I’m feeling inspired by folks like Jill Johnston, many memoirs read in Cynthia’s class, and the one and only Gabriel Bruno Eng Gonzalez. I wrote a paper for CO’s class that I feel proud of. It is titled Mama! and is about how the death of my mom three weeks into my creative life affects the way I think about and create dance. I’ve also been keeping up with my newsletter and have 35 people subscribed.

This year I have taught a wide range of classes: Ballet, Jazz, Contemporary, and Line Dancing. This has been a welcome challenge and I have enjoyed finding my way in all these different forms. I am still working on finding my way in Jazz and Ballet. I had hoped to get a bit more experimental in the way I approached these forms and honestly feel like I fell short. Towing the line between what I am interested in and what my students desire is a constant negotiation. All this said, I am proud of the way I continue to show up as myself in front of the classroom. There was a time where my teaching self and myself were very different entities, now they are feeling harmonious. 

It would be remiss of me not to talk a bit about Queer Line Dancing. What’s queer about Queer Line Dancing? Well I am queer and I am line dancing. The lines are still straight but queer bodies are operating within this predetermined structure. Every time the dance gets to the back wall and I see a bar full of people dancing movement I created, it feels like maybe this is the whole point; the whole point of dance in this world, the whole point of me in this world. I know that is dramatic but for just a second once a month it is how I feel and I feel it fully. I am making sense of the world through collective movement and this obsession with imperfect unison. 

This feels like a nice segue into community. In all honesty everything I have written about thus far is deeply steeped in community. I am slowly realizing it is the most important part of every facet of my practice. I feel pride in the community I have built here and perhaps even prouder of the one I have sustained in St. Louis. Fostering community is both a pleasure of mine and work that I am finding to be increasingly political. Lately I have been feeling like perhaps the thing I am greatest at choreographing is community. 

Well… I am planning to move to New York after finishing this degree. I know, CLICHE CITY!!!! I am just starting to say this out loud and I still feel a little crazy typing it. A part of me knows that I could (and maybe should) move back to St. Louis and have a real impact on the field there while also being able to afford a life I enjoy. Yet, a bigger part of me knows I will not be fulfilled there. There is simply not enough for me outside of myself. While I take pride in how I have paved my way in the scene and created more space for process driven experimental work, I need to be in a place where there are more than four people operating in this way. I’m doing what I can to start preparing for this move financially. I’m also headed back to ADF this summer, but this time I will be there as a choreographer (pinch me!). I’ll be serving as the U.S. Representative for their International Choreographer in Residence Program where I will be dancing all day and setting work on students there and teaching a class or two and getting to know a cohort of international choreographers and DOING NO ADMIN WORK!!!! WOAH!!! Anyways, I say all this not to brag about my dreams coming true right in front of my eyes, but to add that my time at ADF has always shaped my work and has also been a place where I have been able to make meaningful connections with people in the field (a.k.a. New York City).

I truly feel lucky to be here and sometimes cannot believe this is my life. I am keeping my plate nice and full while trying not to get a bellyache from all the deliciousness. The big Third Year (and the real world after) is looming and slightly terrifying, but I am excited about it and feel…. Ready??? Okay, I feel almost ready which is a great way to feel as I am almost there.