Dance, pre-2009

I began dancing at age five and eventually earned a degree in Dance from the University of Washington, where I performed with the Chamber Dance Company in works by pioneers of modern dance including Martha Graham, Trisha Brown, José Limón, and Charles Weidman. Dance gave me my first understanding of the body as both material and medium, and it was also my introduction to performance art, which I only discovered toward the end of my college years.

After graduating, I moved to New York City to continue working as a performer. In New York I danced with a variety of companies and artists. During this period I was immersed in contemporary performance, appearing in theaters, galleries, and alternative spaces.

My 2008 Honors thesis project, Getting (Un)dressed, marked the beginning of many questions that would later emerge in my visual art practice: performance, self-presentation, identity, and the relationship between a woman and her image.

Over time I became increasingly frustrated by both the ephemerality and power dynamics of dance. Performances disappeared as soon as they occurred, surviving only through documentation made by others. Beyond that, the documentation itself was often created and owned by someone else. As a performer, your body may be central to the work, yet you have little control over how it is recorded, circulated, or remembered. That tension eventually led me toward photography and visual art, where I could create, shape, and own the image directly. Rather than performing within someone else’s work, I became interested in creating the work itself.

The final video on this page was made when I decided to leave dance behind. It marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. Looking back, I see dance as a foundation for much that followed. The questions that first emerged through movement continue to shape my work today: What does it mean to be seen? Who controls the image? And what remains after the performance ends?