An ongoing project, or study, of a universal language. One that transcends spoken words while holding deep cultural and emotional meaning. This is an exploration of movement as a form of identity, tradition, and personal expression across different dance practices and communities that focuses on the human form.
“I dance to find the extraordinary. I move to feel what it’s like to transform. My body contains endless stories and people. I let them free through my skin, my muscles, my bones.“ -Taylor Massa
"Dancing for me always comes down to feeling connected. It’s very difficult to do as a profession. It’s gruelling, it’s exhausting, it’s painful, it’s mentally frustrating, it’s a life littered with rejection and penny pinching. Despite all of this it is one of the most sure fire ways for me to find myself in awe of the fact that I am made of the very same stuff as the trees and the mountains and the people sitting in traffic. When you get down to the very tiny minutia of yourself in the visceral way that dancing demands, you realize it’s part of much bigger systems and you remember that the entire universe of your life is also the tiny minutia in a bigger system. It feels somehow very rewarding and very good to be this tiny minutia that is evolving and moving and reacting in real time to the something greater, with lots of other tiny minutiae, all taking very deep care." Sylvia Berman on Ballet
“This Dance This dance that was already there, This dance that brings me closer To what is really there. I’d always felt alone, always chasing, searching for humanity, My humanity - a wet stone, was there in the shadows. Dance has allowed me to depart the milky film of society and cities and vibrate, Like the animal that I am.” -Oscar Suh-Rodriquez on Butoh.
“This is not a dance. This is a fight for humanity. This is an unheard voice of death. This is endless mourning of slain warriors” - Mizuho Kappa
“As a child, I danced in the forest. I was not alone there- shadows, the wind, the peeling light, creatures writhing below and above me. There are realms I only touch through movement. Worlds away from anything tangible. I bury myself there, getting lost and digging through glistening soils. I dream and let my bones speak. They carry minerals and sounds unimaginable. I wait and listen. I am their audience. Ferns grow from my skin, I make use of my body as conduit. Dance slips through my existence and creates threads to everything I’ve touched and cannot touch.” -Eilish Henderson on butoh and contemporary movement.
