Territory of Men

Presented at the Artklub, New Orleans, LA, January 2019. An hour long dance performance, set for four dancers and four musicians. Original music by Painted Honey. Choreography by Katya Chizayeva. Danced by Richard Siday, Kimmi Allen, Ann Glaviano, and Reese Johnson.

Inspiration for choreographic process came from a 10 day workshop “Being a Pig” with Deborah Hay in 2018 in Austin, TX. This piece follows similar research of embodied philosophy, insisting that dancers remain in “here&now", constantly change perspective of their visual field, and focus on internal answering “what if” questions posed to the entire somatic network of their body, their true teacher. This is a scored improvisation, with set structures, specific physical research, and internal task to not buy into anything except being in the present and learning from your experience.

The theme for the show emerged from questioning what happens when one’s territory is crossed by men.

How does the body changes to organize itself in the presence of men? What do fear of toxic masqulinity evokes in females/queer people?

The piece explores coping strategies that get developed or triggered in order to maintain personal boundaries when power dynamics shift.

Posing questions about our conscious and unconscious behaviours and visceral reactions, I made choreographic decisions based on dialogue with dancers about our conditioning around interacting with men.

All tools become valid, from manipulation to seduction to laughter, to protect and maintain personal power.

We picked a “Hangman” card from Tarot deck to represent the potential for creativity and blockage when we face our real and imaginary perceptions of men. The show began with interactive game with the audience,The Hangman, which was played with no winners, to signify that no one wins, and everyone suffers, when we play power games with each other.

I was very interested in researching somatic responses in the presence of specific imagery. There are moments when the dance comes from sensations from the memories. During the ‘construction of Tower’ using the chairs moment, the group interacts with the phallic sculpture, before destroying it. However, during the entire performance the overarching score was to be researching the state of ‘‘constant present’’, or “Haying”.  Thus, the scores guided the performance, but the main purpose was to practice not to buy into the image making, to be free to learn from the practice and experience of performing, without arriving at any specific goal.

The music added its own lyrical haunted presence. It was a pleasure to collaborate with Painted Honey, a queer pop witch band, whose original lyrics focus on evoking the devine feminine, which synergized in inspiring ways with our dance process.

other work

Sisterhood, 2018, NOLA

Sisterhood is a 30 min piece cocreated with Ryuta Iwashita. In this work we both unpacked our toxic relationships with our respective sisters, reflecting on the sentiment of kinship and power play that left us with sadness, and desire to make a change.

I am officially an Alien, 2017, NOLA

Another collaboration with Ryuta Iwashita, 30 min show inspired by our emigration stories. Humorous, duo research with dialogue and dance drama of two Alien beings.