In the first few months of the pandemic, I saw a lot of dancers lose their work opportunities, be unable to join their fellow company members in studio (& experience emotional & physical exhaustion – enough so that they were unable to train, even) If you were used to a studio environment & suddenly forced into your kitchen or backyard to work, it’s wasn’t going to be the same.

I was impressed with how artists were able to take these circumstances & improvise around them to create outstanding moments of beauty & meaning. And I’ve always appreciated those who are able to create such things outside of a studio or stage environment.

This project was designed to provide employment to artists who lost work opportunities due to our collective shutdown. This project was for those individuals who were able to exist & create such moments of beauty, regardless of their working environment.

Each week (after I sent payment - above CADA rates/industry standards) I provided each artist a narrative/piece of choreography that I had created the day before the working week (it was presented as paragraph/stanza/prose or specific instruction) I like the immediacy & the idea of using something new (& putting a little pressure on myself by waiting until the last possible moment) They took that piece, and during the working week, they interpreted & workshopped what I sent to them (knowing they had free reign to do whatever they saw fit with the narrative provided) & when they were ready, they sent video documentation of the process to me.

We selected a segment of their process (or they created their own mini-dancefilm) and we published it on this site (There are dozens of videos we have in the archives that are offline for now)