The Role of Salome: An Exploration of Sexuality in Dance

I work to create dreamscapes that bring dances from all different corners of life together. Dance attracts me so strongly because it functions as many things for many different people – an escape, a love affair, a release, an expression. There are many different forms of dance, and many of them are never seen in a theater – they’re found in nightclubs, in subway stations, on street corners, in bedrooms and rooftops and the circus. Walking through New York City, you could find any and all of these dance forms – people looking for something, and finding it through dance.Currently, I am working with a fusion of belly dance and hip-hop. Through the two dances I choreographed, I have been exploring what it does to the dance and to the audience to bring multiple styles of dance onto stage, as well as attempting to share my continual amazement at the phenomenon of dance in all its forms, intertwining in the dance of life. What I am working to express is the tangibility of the sheer joi de vivre that stems from dancing, whether it’s the dance you do in the shower or what you see at the ballet. In the first dance I choreographed, “Rhinoceros”, I focused on creating complexity using simple movement schemes and layering multiple events. I built the structure around each dancer’s individual movement, and played with putting one person’s ‘essential movements’ on others. By fusing individual styles and working with unison, I created a landscape of activity. In the second dance I choreographed, “Daughter of Salome”, I created a solo to work with a form of dance called tribal fusion – fusing traditional belly dance and hip-hop. Both of these forms of dance are typically seen as ‘low art’, not what is expected of a black box theater performance. I am interested to see what the combination of this series of variables will bring out on stage. Decked in deer antlers and dancing to live music, I am working to create not just a dance, but an independent microcosm within the black box of Theater Two. Through these dreamscapes, I hope to present an opportunity for an intersection between all styles of dance. Breaking belly dance away from a connotation of burlesque and female objectification, breaking hip hop away from a connotation of lower art, breaking ballet away from a connotation of high art and fragility, allowing them to intertwine and grow from each other – that is what I am striving for