Choreography as Creative Research

The Pew (2023)

The Reaping (2019) proscenium version

The reaping is a dance work made in a fused Cunningham- based aesthetic. The work is based on John Carpenters’ Halloween Soundtrack (distorted of course). The movement quality will be unsettling, using traditional virtuosic Cunningham form with and urban Africanist weight. The dancers are masked in black.

Crash Dance: There Are No Accidents (2019)

Crash Dance is a Collaboration between the National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) and the UI Dance Department (DD). This collaboration is steeped in questions relating to how science and the arts might be used to explain complicated concepts and forge new directions in knowledge production. One central idea prevalent for both NADS and DD is the idea of moving objects (bodies and cars) through space and time without collision is both a choreographic and an engineering concern.

This performance investigates the ‘parameters and rules’ that engineers use for designing automated cars and apply those concepts to dance making through the use of "choreographic thinking." The dance work is not demonstrative, in that the dance is not illustrating what automated cars do on the road. Instead, drawing upon the design codes and information used to build the automated cars, the performance, through the choreographic, illustrate how those ideas might be shown, shared, and evaluated.

Not Quite Cunningham (2018)

This work is the result of embodies research with the Cunningham Trust (Legacy Company). The movement is a mixture of Black religious expressionism, aspects of the Cunningham Technique, and Vogue Dance (Black Queer Dance). This work seeks to find blackness or "cool" in a post-modern dance context.

Quotidian's Gospel and the Lovers' Bench (2018) & Quotidian's Reprise (2019)

This work is a partial queer reconstruction of Talley Beatty's The Mourner Bench (1947). The movement is a mixture of Black religious expressionism, aspects of the Cunningham Technique, and Vogue Dance (Black Queer Dance).

Scarcely Present (2014)

Its playful, crazy-quilt of unfolding action, its many surprising meetings and partings leavings scarcely present. A dance where no one gets left behind.

Scarcely Present (2014) from Chris M on Vimeo.

blckbddiesmttr (2015)/Pillow Talk...we are here again (2018)

#blckbddiesmttr (2015). Is an investigation in to the movement language(s) of ‘riot’ by triangulating media coverage, op-ed articles, and individual accounts of the Black Lives Matters Movement. The research questions that will guide the creative process are: Can the movement language(s) of riot be abstracted and made to fit a proscenium space? Should it be made to fit the stage? Is it possible to look at moving black bodies in distress both as a site for cultural commentary, and as an artistic expression? Is it possible to make text based, complicated, and full body movement in the same dance work concerning race with out making it preachy or sententious?
I approach this work from a post modern black dancing body. It is meant to reference not recreate the "protest'

#bodiesmatter 2015 from Chris M on Vimeo.

Look Busy Jesus is comin (2011)

Look Busy Jesus Is Coming (2011) is an investigation to the ‘Hysterics of the rapture’. In May of 2011, hysteria developed concerning the end of the world and the Christian interpretation of that event. One preacher said he used the words of the bible and developed a number theory that allowed him to pin point the second coming of Christ. In the creation of this work I use the ‘actions words’ from the 1-3 chapter in the Book of Revelations and develop a choreographed movement language that is not simple a representation of Christ’s coming, but is structurally a reconstruction through performance of that very “coming/arrival”. I composed a soundscape of all the visual images, which included responses to the alleged coming, worries, and newscast to represent the body of experience that was being developed from and around this event. For me both of this works take the text (Bible) as material for composition, and yet they are both the very act. “Look Busy Jesus is Coming (2011)” is not a dance about the rapture it is a choreographic equation of that very rapture. This works is based on a system that has rules. These rules can be presented as a floor plan for a structured improvisation or as collections of words to create a language adhered to with rigour.