“Conditions” premieres at Soaking Wet Festival, commissioned by Women In Motion

When I was nineteen, I experienced my first disorienting injury while a student at Juilliard. I herniated two discs and fractured three vertebrae. The experience necessitated a restart of epic proportions. As one wise teacher said (thank you, Alfredo Corvino), “You were trained so well but so wrong.”  I began the long process of re-training towards a responsive body/being.  Somewhere there also began the choreographic process, thought, and discovery—physical limitations providing a scaffolding for change.

As I approach my 50th birthday and create my first solo in 15 years, the ongoing work of re-making the body was again brought to the forefront this winter when I tore a hamstring tendon. The injury, as they all are, has been perplexing, disorienting, and yes, depressing. The daily practice of rehab while attempting to craft a work that addresses survival, endurance, and adapting to the unexpected has been deeply frustrating. And yet, something new was born, something that would otherwise not have been made.

Conditions manifests what it is to be fragile and strong, what it is for a body to regrow tissue knowing something will inevitably fail again, and wonders how we console and support ourselves and others to endure, even in failure.

I would love you to witness. Join me and dynamos Joya Powell and Garnet Henderson for Women in Motion at Soaking Wet.