Emerging Themes & Through Lines: reflections on creative work, past and future

As I begin to prepare for my MFA thesis project, I am reflecting on how my current work connects to work from my past. I am surprised at the themes that are emerging as I look back, and even more surprised by the fact that I hadn’t made these realizations sooner. Many of my choreographic pieces and projects from college tie into the research I am doing today on the relationship between small and large (micro and macro, individual and communal) and Adrienne Maree Browns' Emergent Strategy—specifically, the elements of intentional adaptation and interdependence.

Part I - The Long Line (2016)

I can identify intentional adaptation and interdependence in one of my first choreographic works from 2016. The Long Line is an ensemble piece I choreographed in response to a Ted Talk episode by conductor Benjamin Zander. In this episode, Zander gives a lecture on the 24 Preludes by pianist Frederic Chopin. One of the many lessons that Zander shares with his audience in this lecture is the importance of focusing on your vision, or as he calls it “the long line.” Using the Chopin prelude to translate his lesson into a lesson for life, Zander talks about how all of the small, individual steps (or, in the case of music, notes) contribute to the vision (or song) as a whole. Click Here to view the Ted Talk episode.

This concept of pursuing a vision one step at a time fueled the creative inspiration for my 2016 piece The Long Line. The Long Line explores struggles and obstacles of everyday life and the different ways people respond to these experiences, taking the dancers on a journey of learning and growing as they move one step at a time towards a newer and stronger version of themselves. The dancers are pulled back and forth by the magnetic forces of past, present and future as they focus their attention on each precious step forward. Although I didn’t know of Adrienne Maree Brown’s work at the time, this dance is entirely about intentional adaptation—the process of changing while staying in touch with our deeper sense of purpose. Brown elaborates on intentional adaptation by stating “As an individual, developing your capacity for adaptation can mean assessing your default reactions to change, and whether those reactions create space for opportunity, possibility, and continuing to move towards your vision” (Brown 2017, 71).

The Long Line (2016)

Intentional adaptation is a tool for individuals and communities to cope with, adjust to, and possibly flourish from moments of instability. Brown organizes these moments into two categories: shocks and slides. Shocks are acute moments of disruption, for example market crashes, the loss of a loved one, and (cough cough) global pandemics. Slides are equally as catastrophic but occur incrementally, such as climate change and unemployment. I have always been a goal-and-growth-oriented person, and I have always had visions for myself that others would categorize as unrealistic when looking at where I come from. Intentional adaptation is the tool that has allowed me to cope with and learn from traumas (or, instability)— growing up poor, the loss of my father to suicide, depression, abuse—to focus on my vision of becoming the best version of myself, despite those challenges. Intentional adaptation takes those experiences and makes them digestible, allowing me to move forward another day toward my vision.

Part II - Indeterminacy Festival: PASTFUTURE/FUTUREPAST (2019)

The theme of dealing with disruption and uncertainty, while pursuing community and connection can also be seen in my work for Indeterminacy Festival 2019. Indeterminacy Festival is an annual interdisciplinary arts festival that explores indeterminacy—"the various facets of uncertainty, which are typically experienced as negative, transformed into a site of creative possibility” (Oltmer 2019). Each year, the festival draws together over eighty collaborators from across a wide set of backgrounds and experiences. These collaborators check in with each other periodically, but don’t come together fully until the final performance—adding to the levels of uncertainty around the project.

The word indeterminacy means “not knowing in advance, not determined or precisely fixed”—and that is exactly what this project feels like from the inside out. Each year there is a different theme that brings collaborators together in their creative endeavors. However, aside from the theme performers, directors, and spectators don’t know what to expect during performance. In earlier years of the festival, I had participated as a performer. One year, after months of rehearsing choreographic material outside on an abandoned grain silo site, it began to thunderstorm dramatically an hour before our performance. Without hesitation, all collaborators had to problem-solve (quickly!) to move over 80 performers inside the shelter of the silos. I personally found this new adaptation of the performance more exhilarating and exciting than what we had developed in the first place.

While serving as head choreographer for the festival in 2019, I worked with three different groups of dancers—one group of college-age dancers, one group of refugee children new to dance, and one ensemble of senior citizens with Parkinson’s Disease. I held weekly or biweekly workshops with each group separately from September to May, and the performers all came together on-site for the first time, hours before our performance. Our theme for the year was interstellar communication, and each group of dancers worked with 20x20 foot parachutes--so large they couldn’t fully expand in the rooms we rehearsed in. These parachutes were used to represent planets in orbit and gravitational waves. We collaborated with a projectionist, who was committed to designing light which would illuminate the parachutes throughout the duration of the performance.

The day before our show, there was an incredible windstorm that tore down many of the set elements we had put up. We adapted by buying multiple sandbags to help weigh down the parachutes, but of course, that wasn’t the only disruption on our vision of the performance. Hours before the show started our projectionist quit. In the moments leading up to the performance our generator blew—causing us to lose our only power source. We all adapted, the audience arrived, and the show went on.

If Indeterminacy Festival isn’t a practice in intentional adaptation and developing interdependence, I don’t know what is. Interdependence is the ability to meet each other’s needs in a variety of ways—developing mutual reliance and shared leadership toward a central vision. Without intentional adaptation and interdependence, we would have been better off calling it quits and cancelling the show. The only reason this festival is successful each year is because of these elements of adaptation and interdependence. Over the course of several months, collaborators develop trust that if (when) something goes “wrong,” there will be a community there to support the collective vision. This is why I believe it is imperative that tools for adaptability and interdependence are shared with those in our local communities.

Part III – Dancing Through Difficulty: Embodied Tools for an Ever-Changing World

For my thesis project, I am creating an embodied approach to Brown’s Emergent Strategy— “how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for” (Brown 2017, 3). The elements of Emergent Strategy which guide my work are (1) Fractals, the relationship between small and large; (2) Adaptative, how we change; (3) Interdependence and Decentralization, who we are and how we share; (4) Non-Linear and Iterative, the pace and pathways of change; (5) Resilience and Transformative Justice, how we recover and transform; and (6) Creating More Possibilities, how we move towards life. For this project, I will use movement exercises for developing skills in intentional adaptation and interdependence, which will be shared with people in the Columbus community. These exercises will guide participants on a journey of individual reflection, growth-oriented goal making, and connection building. After setting visions for their personal growth, participants will use the embodied tools learned to create a vision together as a community—addressing changes they would like to see in their local neighborhoods. “How we live and grow and stay purposeful in the face of constant change actually does determine both the quality of our lives, and the impact that we can have when we move into action together” (Brown 2017, 69). By emphasizing fractals—beginning small (individual) and working towards the large (communal), I believe that participants will have tools for shifting and adapting to the many challenges our country faces in the years to come while working towards their vision as individuals and as a community.

Brown, Adrienne Maree. 2017. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.

Chico: AK Press.

Oltmer, Alexis. 2019. Indeterminacy Festival: PASTFUTURE/FUTUREPAST. The Public.

Retrieved from: http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/05102019/indeterminacy-festival-pastfuturefuturepast Accessed March 9 2021.

Teaching Statement

This is my teaching statement, written as part of the 2020-2021 GATA Award portfolio. Course: Pilates I, AU 2020, The Ohio State University

Growing up, I loved the act of learning but never considered myself a “natural learner”. This insecurity followed me from elementary school into college. I remember trying to hide in the back of classrooms, feeling intense anxiety when asked to come to the whiteboard, and feeling shame for weeks after answering a question incorrectly. Along with these memories of self-consciousness and doubt, however, I also have a vivid memory of the first time I felt seen in a classroom. During my first semester of college, I took a kinesiology course which met once a week for three hours in the evening. After weeks of attending seminars, I was barely passing with a C in the course. Finally, the teacher asked me to stay after class and recommended maybe the course material was not the issue, and maybe the long class period during the evening was affecting my abilities. He encouraged me to take the course again, twice a week in the mornings. That semester I received an A in the course. Since then, I have served as a TA for kinesiology twice, earned a Pilates certification, and now teach functional anatomy and kinesiology to my students.Until that point, I believed I was lacking in my ability to learn like my classmates. I now understand there is no one way to learn and thus, no one way to teach—which led me to my teaching philosophy of focusing on and building learning around the strengths of individual students.

As an instructor of dance studio and Pilates conditioning classes, I emphasize individualizing and pluralizing in the development of curriculum. I communicate class materials in ways which allow each student to find a personal connection to the content while building relations with class peers. I structure the classroom in ways which empower students to engage with material while honoring their own distinct bodies and their own learning affinities by offering multiple ways of communicating class content. Students engage with class content orally, visually and kinesthetically through lectures, videos, class discussions, readings, still images, visualization, small-group exercises, personal reflection, individual physical practice, and group physical practice. Students learn both synchronously and asynchronously, allowing them to process material individually before coming together as a group. During an informal anonymous survey, one student reported an appreciation for the variety of ways the class interacted, stating “the constant shifting from synchronous to asynchronous actually makes the semester more flexible and fluid.”

I believe students learn better when they feel a sense of community in the classroom—which is why I always focus on community-building before class content. To implement this in my teaching, I begin each class session with a group check-in activity. Check-in activities allow us to enter the workspace in an open and neutral state and get everyone in the framework of working together. During the first week of class I ask students to share their favorite songs, which I then use to create a collaborative class playlist for the duration of the course. I use this playlist as students enter our Zoom meetings, during group physical practice, and tell students they can also access it while practicing exercises individually. Lastly, because students mostly learn course materials either online or in small groups to allow for proper social distancing, I plan full-class days online where we practice exercises together as a group every few weeks. At the end of the semester, multiple students expressed their appreciation for these moments of community building, with one student stating, “the positive community we’ve build with check-in’s and get-to-know-you exercises have made me feel so much more comfortable in this class and definitely aided to success.” Another student wrote, “I really like the check-ins at the beginning of class. I feel much more comfortable with this class than I do with any other Zoom lecture I am in.”

I understand my students as individuals through the use of journals and weekly prompts. Each semester, I have students submit five journal entries throughout the duration of the course. Students are provided with weekly writing prompts which guide them toward connecting their physical practice with any philosophical queries from lectures. Although prompts are offered each week, students have agency over which five weeks of the semester they want to submit. Students also have choices for how they document their reflections, including options of both written journal entries and video blog entries. By offering flexibility and options around how and when students submit assignments, I empower them to engage with material while honoring their own learning affinities. One student reported enjoying “the freedom to do assignments when we want.”

These journaling assignments also allow me to connect with students one-on-one, which has become even more important during the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, they allow me to understand at a deeper level any questions, concerns and discoveries regarding a student’s physical alignment and well-being, which can be difficult to see fully through a Zoom screen. One student reported feeling they were “getting enough one-on-one feedback even though there could not be physical touch.” Often times journal entries become long threads back and forth, sharing personal stories and making connections during a time of intense isolation and uncertainty. Journal entries allow me to help students feel seen and heard.

I know these teaching strategies work not only because of feedback, but also because students return to my classes. Currently, multiple students from my Pilates I course have returned to my Pilates II course this semester. Additionally, two students have requested to work with me for independent study to continue deepening their practice. During an anonymous survey, I asked the question “what can I do right now to further support and enhance your learning?” One students’ response, which reflected many other responses, wrote “I think everything is so well thought out and executed seamlessly, which is incredible in the middle of a global pandemic. I really enjoy the way class is currently going!” Alongside the positive feedback I’ve received from students, the act of students returning to my classroom tells me—although I will always be growing as an educator—I am meeting my personal goals as their teacher.

Impetus (2020) - A Study on Intentional Adaptation

"Impetus explores the space between self and society as a woman fights to find her identity, untarnished by expectations of outside elements and influences. Through movement, she reflects on how society has shaped her. Some parts she keeps, some parts she leaves behind. She decides who she wants to be in the world and creates an impetus for long-awaited change." Impetus has been nominated by the Ohio State University to represent the department of dance in the 2021 ACDA film festival.

Directing and editing by michaela neild

Performance by kerrylyn kercher

Choreography by michaela neild & kerrylyn kercher

Sound Score:

"the grass grown" used courtesy of michael wall

"geometria del universo" used courtesy of cecile schott

text by kerrylyn kercher