My Artist’s Statement

We dance on the hands of our ancestors.

Bring your focus inward. Place the ‘souls’ of your feet on the ground. Visualize roots growing from your feet, reaching deep into the Earth. Acknowledge those who have placed their foot here before you. Open your body to receive their messages. Open yourself to the possibility that in dancing the movements of our ancestors, in remembering the ways they moved, we can remember the ways they lived: in harmony and connection with the Earth. 

We live in an extreme state of disconnection, separated from our own bodies, our inner selves, communities, families, food sources, and land underfoot. Many are so disconnected from their bodies they are unable to move without pain, fear, or a deep sense of embarrassment. We have forgotten that dance is for everyone; that we belong in our bodies, and we belong in community. When we dance, we become the transformation: As we cultivate presence in our own bodies, we help create a more present society. As we return to our bodies, we return to the Earth. 

When we dance, our relationship with the Earth is reflected in the way our foot connects with the floor. Our disconnection from the Earth becomes literal as we dance on our toes and lift our bodies away from the Earth. In many pre-colonial cultural dance forms, there is a heaviness about the movement, an honoring and emphasis of downward, Earth-bound motion, and a willingness for the entire foot to communicate gently with the Earth, as if it were dancing on the hands of the ancestors. The dancing body is grounded in generations of myth; stories that speak of all the ways we are a part of, and not above, the Earth. 

As a white woman, I am not the story. But I can be part of the story. I can help amplify the dancing wisdom of black, brown, and indigenous culture bearers – the firekeepers of ancestral wisdom. Those whose dances, rhythms, songs and stories lead back to Earth-centered ways of knowing. In studying matriarchal, pre-colonial, Earth-centered dance traditions, I hope to dismantle white, patriarchal dance traditions in my own body and mind, and re-shape the role dance plays in our society. 

Ultimately, I aim to create dance that calls us back home; to return to our bodies and re-connect with the Earth under our feet. I have used dance as a powerful tool to transform and heal myself and my community. Now, I want to create dance that transforms and heals the Earth. I want to make dance that calls the carbon back to the soil, calls the dancer into the wild, the foot back to the Earth, and the community to unified action. Dance that plants seeds and restores natural landscapes. I want to literally dance forests into existence. 

Enough disconnection – let us dance with our feet on the Earth, and our hands in the soil. Let us dance on the hands of our ancestors.