RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY
My research is grounded in the belief that creative practice is a form of knowledge-making and community discovery. I approach dance and performance not only as artistic expression, but also as a site of inquiry where movement and embodiment reveal insights into identity, culture, and the human experience. I investigate questions through multiple lenses—dance performances, theatre productions, online ritual experiments, site-specific public art, and video—valuing experimentation, play, and the generative potential of failure.
Collaboration is central to my practice. I frequently work with live musicians, integrating sound and movement to create immersive, interdisciplinary performance experiences. My work in film and video further expands the ways I investigate movement, space, and narrative. Additionally, I continually seek out avenues for learning by participating in international art residences, workshops focused on new media practices, and training with other dance and physical theatre artists. These experiences inform my work by exposing me to diverse approaches, methodologies, and perspectives.
For example, during a recent residency in Crete, Greece, I began to explore and document traditional Greek Dance forms, connecting my diasporic heritage to contemporary research questions. I am committed to integrating my research into my studio practice and classroom lectures to diversify the curriculum, a move inspired by listening closely to my students’ interests and desires for cultural breadth. This scholarship also manifests in writing articles currently in process, and I actively seek opportunities to present my work at conferences or festivals.
I embrace practice-as-research, understanding that the process of making is itself a method of investigation. Each project—whether a solo athletic feat, a collaborative performance, or an immersive collective experience—examines the body as both object and site of knowledge, interrogating politics, femininity, etiquette, the male gaze, and liberation. Documentation, reflection, and interdisciplinary dialogue enable me to translate embodied discoveries into scholarly frameworks while preserving the integrity of the artistic process. I am particularly interested in exploring how emerging technologies, including AI, can expand movement research, generating new mythologies and narratives for investigation through performance and choreographic structures, while preserving historical threads of research and culture.
As an artist, my aesthetic is rhapsodic, anxious, and purposefully silly, using humor and play to explore challenging subjects and the intensely personal nature of identity. I combine avant-garde performance art, contemporary dance, comedy, and cultural commentary, drawing inspiration from artists and choreographers such as VALIE EXPORT, Maya Deren, Mary Wigman, Pina Bausch, Meg Stuart, Lloyd Newson, Joan Jonas, Mark Dendy, and Frantic Assembly.
Ultimately, my work seeks to expand the boundaries of dance and performance scholarship, treating movement, embodiment, and play as both method and medium of inquiry.