Living Arts LAB Residency

Over the holidays, I went to Tulsa to relax, spend time with family and friends, and... work!  I was selected as an artist in residence for the Living Arts LAB, an interdisciplinary research and development program for the arts.  I grew up in the area and live there part time when not in New York, so I was looking forward to meeting and reconnecting with other artists in the community.

It was a great opportunity to start working on my newest dance in development, Love/Lost, which will premiere in NY this spring, as well as to dream up and start playing with some of the other ideas I have bouncing around my head.

First step was creating a workable dance space within the large mixed use gallery made available to me in downtown Tulsa.  By the way, you know you're in the right neighborhood for an art space when you see converted warehouses and pride flags.

The director of the program got me settled in the space, and we turned on the heater, taped down some marley, hung a few lights, and started playing.  I did improvisation to generate some of the movement vocabulary I'm now using in rehearsals with my NY dancers and did some filming.

Also while at the LAB we brought in a green screen to begin experimenting with a live video creation and projection project my husband is collaborating with me on -- that one is still very much in the beginning stages.

A few friends and family dropped by to see what we were up to, but one nice thing about this residency is that there were no expectations of creating a final "work" to show.  You just get three weeks of time and space to work on your project.  Of course I had my own goals for what I was wanting to do with this time.


I really used the time to seed new ideas (i.e., front-loading the creative process), and now that I'm back in New York for the spring, I can flesh out some of these ideas in rehearsal with my dancers, and save some for later!

Photos courtesy of Rick Mellor.