ABOUT THE PRACTICE
Amanda's choreographic work and dancing methodology lives in devotion to understanding the many facets of entanglement -- between science and performance, spirit and matter, bodies and environments, memory and forgetting, ritual and scholarship, future and past, space and time, instinct and intuition -- in ever-evolving research and performance processes that highlight collaboration, embodied practice, and dialogue. This work foregrounds movement as a primary frontier through which to understand the nature of humanity, create new ways of being in relationship (to the self, other, and the environmental world), and establish new languages to speak across disciplines. This work is about reclaiming the power of the body and disseminating this information through rigorous embodied and academic research, interdisciplinary performances, social practice, and educational workshops. She is enlivened by placing dance in dialogue with as many other forms of inquiry as possible: thus far she has created research projects and performances with neuroscientists, anthropologists, architects, psychologists, marine biologists, and climate change ecologists. Her practice considers movement as a translation device that helps to tell virtuosic stories while facilitating the migration of ideas, energies, discoveries, exchanges, and hospitalities between bodies and disciplines. She has also worked to bring dance into live and recorded music performances, theater, community centers, fashion campaigns, ritual, healing practices, and classrooms, to name just a few.
Her dancing stems from a profound belief in the body as a political site that might teach us how to develop non-hierarchical methodologies of listening, witnessing, and practicing in shared space. We are all impacted and affected by the rigorous needs of our embodied forms; through these forms we might arrive at a profound crossroads that allows us to ask deeper questions about ourselves and each other. At the heart of the work is a deep commitment to long-term, cross-disciplinary collaboration and to performance as an animated research method that offers incisive information about the emotional and social underpinnings of all interaction.
This work is predicated on the belief that the practice and making of art is an act of public service. Inspired by ideological ancestors such as Augusto Boal, Pina Bausch, Joseph Beuys, Fred Moten, the making of interdisciplinary dances and collaborations query the social and political capacity of art. How can the studio, the laboratory, and the performance space be a site for collective action, healing, belonging, and care? How can this practice serve as a rehearsal for the world that we are constantly building in our daily lives and interactions? The materiality of the body allows for us to practice these questions in action.
Rooted in dance and stretching across disciplines rigorous studio work develops into performance ecosystems: dynamic, co-created environments where audience and performer wrestle with questions about themselves, the world, and each other. These ecosystems are grounded in years-long collaborations with scientists, philosophers, and artists across fields, particularly in ecological and neurological research. Together, we design experiments in performance that explore altered consciousness, time perception, and embodied cognition to redefine how we understand healing, memory, and belonging.
Whether through evening-length works, immersive installations, long-form social practice, or embodied workshops, each offering is designed as a ritual experiment designed to ask urgent questions, cultivate emotional and somatic healing, and reimagine how we live with one another.