ABRACADABRA

Tickets for our upcoming show just went on sale. The new work, ABRACADABRA, 4th section of Return of the Bird Tribes, an interlude by brigid baker wholeproject, is a deep piece. Deep in a way that as an artist, I have yet to explore. I’ve never done a piece quite like this before, and yet, I realize, I have. It is at once foreign and familiar, in the way that a new love can at moments feel like an old love. And this I realize is true not just of this piece, but of my experience working with this ensemble, brigid baker wholeproject. 

I first performed with the company in 2005. Fresh out of college, I came to 6th Street Dance Studio by no coincidence. Brigid asked me to step into a piece already well underway, to fill in for another dancer. I didn’t really know at the time what I was getting into. But looking back I have to believe that my spirit knew. I have since performed 19 different works with wholeproject, ABRACADABRA will be my 20th. At times over the years I have tried to think about my experience from an outside perspective. But mostly I have just done it, been in it, just showed up, trained, learned the work, rehearsed, performed and continued. But lately I've been thinking more about how unique my experience, my chosen dance career path, has been, and how different from many of my contemporaries. 

I have worked almost continuously and almost exclusively with one living, contemporary choreographer, Brigid Baker, for the better part of 18 years. Admittedly, there have been times when I looked at my former classmates and colleagues, many of whom went on to dance with major dance companies all over the world and I felt less than. I made a different choice. I stayed in a city not known for dance, and I chose to work with a choreographer whom to many was unknown. But this many years in, I have had what I know to be, a once-in-a-lifetime experience with a master of her craft.

I have spent most of my professional dance career having work created on me - a completely different experience than learning work that was set in a different time, on other dancers - work that already existed. As an artist and interpreter, this was the experience that I didn’t know I longed for. It allows a certain type of internal exploration that set within parameters, affords an unusual type of freedom. The relationship between choreographer and interpreter begins to live somewhere at the crossroads of the mundane and the sacred, the place where I believe all good things exist.

This one aspect of the experience is enough to fill many essays, but there is another aspect that is also unique in the way we work. We work as a true ensemble. The ensemble, at least in the field of dance, is becoming an endangered species. What exactly is an ensemble? It is an intimate group of dancers that is at once whole and supremely individual. It is an experience that is terrifying and rewarding. Dancing as an ensemble means that over time you no longer think about your connection, you become it. It doesn’t matter if you are doing the same choreography at the same time, the ensemble is not just a group of dancers, it in itself has a life. It makes it feel easy to do what may appear to be difficult feats. It’s basically - the power of Abracadabra.

The work I have been able to do with brigid baker wholeproject has been a constant study in the lost art of the ensemble. And over the years this experience has deepened in a way that is hard to express in words. Sometimes it is too much to fit inside your head and so you don’t, you just do the work and instead it expands your heart and the version of yourself that you thought you knew. What I do know is this - my experience, which I am blessed to be able to continue experiencing, is unique, and something I rarely share. It is something that I hold so close to my heart, I have kept it safely tucked away. But now, I feel called to speak. This art form that I love, has changed drastically, and I feel it is my obligation to begin sharing about it, not just on stage, but with my words. So please stay tuned… and thank you for listening.

Photos courtesy of brigid baker wholeproject, Karime Arabia, Cristina Isabel Rivera Sangama, Justin Trieger and Oui Collective.