IF I FALL,
I FALL IN LIGHT
research materials, found objects, drawings, watercolors, and video
In this collection of research materials, found objects, drawings, watercolors, and video, I am exploring the collision of emotions and poetry that flood in during moments of uncanny unrest.
During my two-week residency at the Château d'Orquevaux in December 2025, I spent many days exploring the grounds of the residency, the winding roads of the village, and wandering the woods. On one walk, I discovered the Orchard House. Abandoned, a time capsule of residents' past, it whispered stories. My first visit yielded the discovery of a series of chairs that became a source of constant sketching. Who sat here? Why did they leave them behind? Could these chairs still support a new history and a new life?
Those questions fueled an idea for a movement exploration that brought me back to the Orchard House, but on my next visit, everything changed.
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While inside the Orchard House, I discovered two Eurasian Blue Tits trapped, flying in circles around the anteroom. As I was setting up to film, one of the birds, in their disorientation and panic, flew into a window. The thud resonated in the dilapidated room, interrupting the silence with fear. My body froze as her body pulsed with her rapid heartbeat, her legs grasping for purchase. As she took shallow breaths, so did I, finally able to rush over and, without thought, I picked her up in my hands, cradling her soft, trembling body, and whispered over and over, “I will take care of you. I will hold you until whatever comes next. I will be with you. You are not alone.” I told her why I was in the house and that I would dance for her; that this work would be in her memory. Her obsidian eyes darted back and forth and eventually locked with mine, and I felt her body relax. Her creamy white underbelly rolled with her breaths, and her azure-colored wings fluttered. I rolled her over so that her delicate feet were once again underneath her. She sat upright in my hands. As we stared at each other, sharing our collective fears, it was as if time stopped. Our breaths locked in a timestep. And in an instance, she took a deep breath and flew out the open door.
“If I Fall, I Fall In Light” rises from a moment of dark romance and beautiful dread. Was the bird a warning or an invitation? The encounter felt both intimate and uncanny—two creatures suddenly suspended in the same fear. For an instant, we shared the thought: I might die in this house.
In the days after, I began collecting small objects around Orquevaux—a feather, rocks, a snail shell, twigs, and flowers—as a form of research and remembrance of place. I explored the encounter through gesture drawings as well—of the furniture in the house, of my body in motion, of the emotion of the moment. Those sketches became a map for both choreography and editing, guiding how the video moves, hesitates, and breathes. I repeated these gestures as a form ritual research and grounding.
And I kept returning to the question: what does it mean to save a bird? What does it mean to witness its terror, hold its trembling body, and speak to it until it chooses flight again? These objects, these traces, became part of my investigation into the romance and dread of caretaking.
The work lingers in that suspended moment: the house as both trap and refuge, the absurdity of the situation, the fragile connection formed in the collision. When the bird finally flies, the dread doesn’t vanish—it turns luminous. The video holds the poetry of that fleeting rescue: the intimacy of fear, the tenderness inside uncertainty, and the quiet ache of letting go.
If I’m lost, how can I find myself?
“If I Fall, I Fall In Light"
(2025-2026)
Dance Film
"If I Fall, I Fall In Light" is an experimental dance film exploring vulnerability through cycles of collapse and becoming. The body moves between control and surrender. Gestures fracture and return, shaped by memory and displacement. In this intimate, shifting landscape, collapse grows, softening into something tender and quietly transformative.
Director/Performer: Danielle Georgiou
Camera: Danielle Georgiou, with Isabelle Baldwin
Music: danielgeorge, Isaac Haines
Lyrics: Danielle Georgiou
Video and Sound Editor: Danielle Georgiou
Copyright 2026
Watch the trailer below.