My Unfinished Becoming of a Dancer...

I’m originally from Atlanta, born in north Georgia and then raised in the city. I had an incredible high school experience at Dekalb Center for Performing Arts, went to North Carolina for college and a BFA in Dance, and then moved to New York City in 1998. I quickly found my people in the mess of weird, scrappy, experimental shows I did all over the city. We performed outside, in houses, in tiny black box theaters, behind bars — where failing, succeeding and surprises felt like part of the education we all needed. It was pretty magical.

Around that same time, I began choreographing my own work, with solo shows presented at Manhattan Theater Source, PS122, Galapagos, and The Flea Theater. My first paid dance job was with a West African dance company formally named Magbana, a surprising but deeply fulfilling extension of the years I had spent immersed in West African dance during college.

In 2000, on a whim, I auditioned for Elizabeth Streb’s company (STREB), where I ended up as a company member and touring the world in her daredevil “Pop Action” works that tested my strength and discipline, and fed my desire for challenge. During my final year with STREB, I became a founding member of Brian Brooks Moving Company, where for nearly a decade I toured nationally and internationally in Brian’s brainy, precise and courageously vigorous choreography. It felt like home. Those years taught me how to inhabit demanding work as more of myself, and how a “team-like” nature of a dance company could also be something intimate and deeply personal.

In 2007, I brushed up my acting and singing chops and went on to join Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company, where I performed in Church at The Public Theater — a piece that was part singing, part theater, part dance — which went on to tour. I so deeply loved performing this show and how it reminded me I have a voice, not only a body.

In 2010 I joined David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group where we performed Big Eater at The Kitchen. I had always loved David’s work and was so excited to finally be a part of it. The wild part was that I was newly pregnant during those performances.

After becoming a mother, I continued to dance in Katie Workum’s brilliant work for many years, pregnant, nursing, and pregnant again. Babies and breast pumps, eating, sleeping and risking being seen as a mother-dancer were all a welcome part of the process and became the foundation for the work we now make together.

We are creators and performers in dance theater productions with musician Annie Hart. Currently, we are building a dance-theater trilogy, PASTFUTUREPRESENT: Oh Everything. The first production, Monster Mourning, premiered in 2023 and was remounted in 2024 to sold-out runs. The second, One Door Closes and Another Door Closes, premiered in May 2025, also to sold-out houses. Our third and final piece of the trilogy, set in the present, will premiere in 2027.

Dance and somatic practices have become interdependent forces for me, shaping my life and work in ways that are sometimes mysterious, other times very tangible — and forever fascinating. It has taken me close to 50 years to acknowledge the depth of impact dance has had on everything I do.

This is an incomplete story, I'm still dancing... so stay tuned.