 Hi Riley, hi Heather, it's nice to see you. So one of the things that I've noticed about your practice is the way that it seems to really encompass a sense of contemplative and active observation in the world. We talk a lot about watching the body and watching the mind and observing the way that these movements in the body and the mind influence one another and I think that's just so amazing because it allows a connection to be made that should be natural but most of the time isn't because it seems like it's easier to inhabit one plane over another sometimes. So in terms of the active observation as a root into your practice, a dance practice or a movement practice, the way that you teach your classes and interact with the other dancers that you work with, could you talk a little bit about that? Talk a little bit about the intentionality behind the active observation and the active making this connection between the mind and the body? You know, dance is a practice that involves your full self, it involves your full body and in saying that I think it also involves your mind as much as your body. I think there's a real difference between the concept of your brain as an organ versus what your mind is and through years of dance training and ballet and improvisation and the choreography that we're making now, I think it's important to both of us that it's not just about the movements that we're doing or the steps that we're doing or the way that they look visually or even are organized in a performance space or classroom but that while you're moving, you've also got a sense that you're moving your state of mind as much as your body and that's one of the things that keeps me doing what I'm doing because it's interesting because the mind is so complex and basically using your body and using movement and using dance to explore your mind and then to figure out how to put that into a performative setting where that's actually what the choreography is, is that we're dancing minds and then also facilitating a performance space where people are going to be watching that is something that has a lot of complexity to it and a lot of mystery to it and it changes every day, the way that you feel one day in the beginning of class or one performance that feels distinctly what that is that day and then the next day I feel like something else so it's this sense of like impermanence that everything is always moving, everything is always changing. Well and then you bring up an interesting point too which is that the audience also has a role in observation of course which is not something I had thought of before so that's interesting to think about like what is that sort of external observation of the observing self, you know, what does that look like? Do you want to speak to us? Yeah, one thing that I feel like both Riley and I bring up quite a bit when we're teaching and working with other people is that like this idea that the mind is everywhere and that like what Riley was saying how there's a difference between like the brain as an organ and like the mind is actually something that for some reason we think about it just existing in our our head space or up here but that we're really interested in like figuring out how we can drop out of that space a little bit and go into like the mind as it like wanders in and out of the body. Intuitive. Yeah, yeah and the like the transformation process that you undergo when you're in that place like how you notice at the beginning of either class or practice or rehearsal how you feel differently than you do even like 20 minutes into it or by the end of it and sort of yeah taking like taking the time and the patience to sit with to sit with yourself and to sit with your body and your mind and allowing for that patience to create space for a transformation to take place. Yeah, that's really interesting too to think about like what the what the line is between something that's intuitive and something that's contemplative. Like are they distinct? Are they intrinsically related and the same and I would love to hear from either of you about how what you're talking about is related to the authentic movement practice that you're interested in. Yeah, authentic movement practice well it's it's something that I discovered in its in its sort of distinct form like fairly recently but that I discovered was really related to a lot of the things that I had been working on or been a part of through my career as a performing improviser with William Forsythe. That's not something we worked on you know in the company when I was living in Germany but it's authentic movement practice is a you know it was it was a actually a form of dance therapy that was created by Mary Starks White House in the 1950s. She was a Martha Graham trained dancer and it was also a Jungian psychoanalyst and so she sort of combined these two experiences or you know sets of knowledge that she had about like this this is what psychology is at this point and and also this is what the body is and so it was a form of dance therapy where she would invite people into you know movement space in a very supportive way where instead of doing you know what I think of as like logic based movement where you're trying to achieve a task where like I'm making an improvisation with the form of ballet and there's sort of a prescribed way that it looks within the form that we know is embedded in the body and historically sort of set already instead of that it's it's like you go you go into the dance space and you close your eyes and you you wait to be moved instead of deciding what you're supposed to be doing and move it that way and so that it offers a space to pay attention to what you're thinking about when you're moving what memories you have what emotions you have all the sort of layers of cognition that happen all the time in us that we don't usually pay attention to or give a lot of space to you know I think of it a lot like you know our conscious our sort of outer conscious layer and then the sort of subconscious later a layer and that sort of Jungian way is bridged by the movement so that's when we're when you're allowing yourself to move intuitively or in this contemplative way and whatever that sort of means it feels almost like you're you're like bringing something up you know you're bringing it up from a from a place that that doesn't usually have a you know doesn't usually have a place because it's it's there but it's not it's not what of usually directing you in terms of how you move yeah and I think that this idea of like not needing to get anywhere in particular is really important and I think that's something that we're both working on not only in teaching it in our class but also in process and making work that going into it without sort of like an idea of it like oh it has to be this one thing or it has to look like this one thing because something is gonna happen like if we like if Riley and I go into the studio and just like start working with each other or start doing something like eventually something will happen so we don't need to like force it to look like anything in particular just be in the moment yeah like every day you feel a little bit different and and you go into the room with what you have and you're not anybody else than who you are that day and when you're moving your your whole body and letting the intuition go like you realize how much you're actually working with like how much is down there like how much of your personal and inherited biography you have that's like that's actually what you're moving yeah you know are being moved by well and then letting yourself watch that and I'm sort of like observational sense that I was mentioning before I think that that is where this like you know very quick transformation can happen you know having taken a class from each of you without having any dance background at all and essentially never considering my body and daily life and never thinking about it you know I was really impressed by how immediate that process was there is you know there is no moment between you know the state of not having that connection and not making that observation and being completely deeply into it just you know because of the way it was presented so I think that's that's amazing how it kind of transcends training and it transcends any kind of didactic relationship you may have to you know the field that you've been educated in yeah yeah for sure yeah I mean dancer or non dancer everybody has a body so everybody has something like if you close your eyes and enter into that space everyone has something in there to notice yeah like how many times do people the other day do you really think about your back but not a thing that people usually think about like you know all of our perceptive architecture is facing front and side like we don't we don't often think about the backs of our body and so but you do have it it's there and it's it's also practice of you know through moving you you feel it happen you have this sort of kinesthetic awareness your your proprioceptive muscles get flaxen get you know get get developed through through dance practice in a way that is always surprising well and it's nice not to have to rely on pain to cause you to make the association yeah yeah my experience it's like oh I noticed this because there's something wrong with it this is just more of a holistic way of recognizing you know the mechanism of you know the mind as maybe something that is intellectual and emotional and then the body is connected but distinct um all right I'm gonna ask you a little bit more about your your own formal practices you're both part of little house dance and you're very connected in that way but I would love to hear a little bit more about how your own histories and practices are distinct from each other and you know what you can tell us about you know what you're bringing specifically as individuals yeah yeah so my most of my professional background is in choreography and in writing and I did you know some professional performing but not in the type of company context that that Riley was in and so I feel like the the sort of angle that I am bringing to the work that we're doing is really formed and has really grown out of the work that I've been doing over the last 10 years working collaboratively with other artists in order to make work and you know sometimes those collaborations have been things that have been really driven by me and then sometimes they've been collaborative work that's been driven by someone else and I feel like that's where a lot of my like that's kind of where my experience and training has come out of and certainly like Riley is very interested in working collaboratively and we've sort of found a way that the different things that we're interested in and exploring that we're able to to bring together and work on yeah I yeah I'm I'm I'm classically trained I started training in ballet and in in Bangor and when I was a kid and then really was on the on a track of I would say ballet into sort of contemporary ballet and to modern dance and I went to the Wallet Hill School for high school is arts arts boarding high school and then I went to Juilliard for college and Juilliard's a very intense school and it's at that time especially it was really really geared towards training training dancers to be professional professional artists and in dance companies so I went to Europe for about 10 years and dance in a couple different companies around there sort of contemporary dance companies most of my most of my performance career has been with a choreographer named William Forsythe in Frankfurt Germany worked with him for about 12 years and you know for really you know for until until now I mean I I haven't primarily thought of myself as a choreographer I've been calling myself more of a dance artist because I find that that term has allowed me to bring in other areas of art practices that are deeply informed by dancing and by choreographic thinking but I just wasn't really ready to you know do do you know sort of what Heather's been doing about like I'm really focusing on making a dance in a performative setting although I you know I have but it wasn't my primary focus and so now you know I moved back to Maine about six years ago or so and in that period I was doing a lot of other you know practices with music and sculpture and video art and teaching improvisation and teaching contemplative dance and really through this commission and through meeting Heather and working with her I've been able to synthesize a lot of those different practices back into what feels very familiar of a dance performance setting somehow that's interesting it's really it's so cool to hear how you're both coming from this immersion in your disciplines from different perspectives and I love how you know that kind of surfaces and connects but also it allows you to maintain what's distinct about your own approach and your own voice yeah it's complex you know to have people in the space with you and it's like it's not just about you anymore but it's about like what you bring together is what you make together is so much so much greater so much bigger than than anything that you could do by yourself right yeah it's surprising interesting and it pushes you and it's yeah yeah it's also not about forming yourself to a disciplinary standard right yeah it's something that I've found that has been kind of like a little bit of a joke between us but it has been really fun is that when I first started working with Riley like a year ago I wasn't like dancing in the work I was really like on the outside in my like choreographic compositional zone and Riley really like pulled me in and now I'm performing in the work and she didn't know yeah I had no plan I had no plans to perform like no it was not it was not something that I was planning to do but the way that we've been working collaboratively it's made sense and I think there's been something really that for me has been really great about this process of coming back into who I am as a performer and starting to think about it and being able to think about that now after having spent you know the better part of the last ten years really focusing on making my own work to now be sort of bringing what I learned from that into my approach as being a performer in a work that Riley is directing and yeah how I think it's kind of cool that Riley in high school he was telling me he identified as a choreographer and then kind of put that aside for a little bit or not put it aside but was just focused on other things and now he's returning to something else so yeah it's been interesting how we've both had these different paths that have gone like this way but we've kind of like yeah we've kind of like come back to things that were familiar to us or more familiar to us maybe when we were younger and that's interesting yeah it's like a shift of perspective too I think I think shifting perspective is so important as an artist like I think one of the reasons why I really craved to do other things besides choreograph or be only only primarily a performer was that it's what I've done since I was ten years old that like that's that's really my main identity is like Riley is a dancer that's what I've done and those that hasn't changed but but then when I sort of do this practice or that practice or that sculpture this video or whatever it's like all of them feel like I'm talking about the same thing but I'm just moving a little bit to this angle and then looking at this these sort of base base values basic you know baseline ideas that I've been growing you know in in curious ways for many many years and I just think that's really valuable because if you don't if you don't you know it's like if you're just looking at one thing or one idea from one perspective and you don't you don't shift yourself relative to it then you only see it from one angle you only see from one perspective and so then you can do that on your own in your practice and then you can also do it with other people you know as your environment like people change you you know yeah we very much like choreograph each other in a way in ways that you wouldn't do if you were just by yourself in a room and like dance is a social art so it happens because people are dancing together and it's interesting too to me as an outside observer of your work together how you both seem to inhabit these totally different physical presences as dancers like you seem to inhabit this like absolutely never-ending liquid that's just like curving through space yeah I feel like you have you inhabit the most kind of like energetic stillness that is like so full of like you know like potential dynamism but is very carefully calibrated and it's just to me it's wonderful to see those things together as these kind of like abstract psychic elements that respond to each other you know they were very different I move very fast I talk fast I think that like everything heathers some measured and she's like she has a real grounding quality which is helpful for me but it's been nice to bring those qualities out in each other like I feel like in some ways you know Riley has like kind of like gotten me going on certain things and like he's able to energize me and like move me forward in ways that are like not just physical but in other ways too and how you know I like to offer like some things to help bring Riley back and so yeah yeah I think it's been I mean I've been having a lot of fun like learning this so it's so fun it's just and then it comes out it's it's just fun it's fun we just enjoy working with each other so much and like it's you know if you're not loving it what you're doing there's no point what are you doing yeah well and it's nice to see how the expression of it is coming together and the piece that you're working on our wolf in the lighthouse which will be you know it'll be so exciting as a kind of a performance that's open to the community to come watch something that's like really opening up the space of the mechanics hall and the sensibility of your work together so I'm really curious about that that piece I'm curious about the narrative structure of the our wolf in the lighthouse piece and how the narrative or you know the kind of more sort of direct background is taking form in a more abstract or conceptual way in the piece so I would love to hear a little bit about the form of the piece but also the background of the piece and Heather if you could also talk a little bit about your experience kind of leading into the creation of this that would be wonderful yeah yeah sure yeah so this project came about I feel like it was like a kind of a perfect storm of like a lot of things that came together to make this work possible but Riley and I started working about a year and a half ago and about a year and a half prior to when we started working my best friend and creative collaborator and composer had died by suicide and I had worked with him his name was Mark Mark Bartasol we worked together for about 10 years and he was with me like through my whole creative practice like from the time I was in school and scored all of the professional work that I had done and so I mean my plan was like I was gonna work with this person for the rest of my life and yeah he he died he died by suicide and it was something that really kind of like threw me and came like out of left field was not something at the time that I was expecting although in retrospect it's easy to kind of like start to see see things like see how things ended up the way that they did and but before he had died I was dealing with a lot of my own struggles with mental illness I live with major depression and suicidal ideation which I've experienced you know from the time I was young and so his death really opened up this like huge space in my life and in my world where I was kind of forced to reconcile and like look at a lot of these things that I was dealing with and struggling with and after he died I was pretty sure that I was not gonna make work again or at least I wasn't gonna make it in the way that I was before and so I had taken a really long break and was sort of like reevaluating everything and then the pandemic happened and like in a lot of ways for me the pandemic was kind of a blessing because it was the first time that I didn't feel the sort of like pressure to have this like forward motion with my career and to be like doing things and it was sort of like okay I'm not in a place where I can make work and the rest of the world isn't in a place where they're working anyways yeah and then Riley reached out and asked me if I wanted to do something with him or just go to the studio and I had nothing going on so I just went and I didn't really have any expectations for what was gonna happen and then he was struggling he was having a dealing with some of his own you know personal things and we were in the studio and we put on the score the score that Mark had made not long before he passed away it's um it's a sort of like a mix that he had made that he had sent to me and I don't know it was sort of like this unspoken thing almost where like we had this music on and we were in the studio and I feel like we both knew we were gonna make a piece at that point and we didn't know it was gonna look anything like what it looks like right now or that it was we were gonna be in this place that we are now but yeah yeah and like and for me there was like a reason to make work again and there was a reason to yeah it was a reminder of like the importance of collaboration and of how that's something that's been really you know special to me it was really special to my relationship with Mark and the way that I worked with him and Riley also knew him and worked with him and so it feels it feels right and it feels like safe to be working on this process with him yeah interesting thank you yeah can you just tell me a little bit about how those kind of narrative devices that you're kind of thinking through and working through on different levels in your life like how those take form in the piece like what is the structure of the piece what does it look like and how is that kind of formal aspect informed by this more narrative aspect yeah a big for in the work that I've been doing a big theme that I've been working with is this idea of like an aftermath or like what it's like to exist in an aftermath and sort of the like kind of like dizzying effects of like what it's like like when you're in sort of that state of like shock of like something that's that's happened and so I've been with the dancers that I've been working with we've been exploring yeah ideas surrounding aftermath ideas surrounding sort of like waking up and being somewhere which is where you didn't expect to land and yeah what it's like to live in that place and similar to the kind of practice stuff that we were talking about like what it's like to live in that space without the expectation that you have to do anything with it or that it's gonna look like what you think it's gonna look like because in a really real way like this work that I'm making now is work that you know I never thought I would have to make because I never thought I would have to make something without my creative partner actually here and so yeah we've been sort of just using like those ways of thinking as ways to approach crafting movement and improvisation and yeah so the pieces in several stages there's the piece that you choreographed and then there's Riley's piece afterwards before before okay see I don't know so I think that's really interesting too to think about it being broken up into these sections that are again distinct but interconnected and kind of structurally driven by the narrative and I also just love how you're kind of thinking about work itself as the conduit from a dark place to a lighter place have you seen Uncle Vanya no it's such it's it's so wonderful and the last scene of Uncle Vanya has these two like you know these two characters who are these like totally difficult people who are impossible to get along with but they're both completely heartbroken and they're just together alone and they've been dismissed by you know everyone else who's left and they talk and they come to the realization that only through work can you address the ramifications of having your heart broken and through that work you find a portal to transcendence and it's just so beautiful to think about work itself which has you know just the idea of work doesn't necessarily hold the promise of you know blooming into another into another realm or inhabiting a different place but it really does and the kind of work that you're describing I love how it's you know it's really you know taking that idea very seriously yeah that really resonates yeah we have there a couple of years ago actually the first kind of thing that we did like this together she had a residency at the Boston Center for the Arts when she was living there and she invited me to show to dance actually in a very similar format kind of what we're doing like she had been working on one piece of her with her dancers a trio and then I came and did a solo before that and we just sort of combined into one evening but we hadn't been working together on it somehow but we were sharing like a show and so this the format of this show that we're doing for Our Wolf is a little bit similar or you know Heather has the work that she's made with her six dancers to the piece of music that Mark made and and that's sort of the second half of the show and then the beginning is a duet that I'm choreographing for the two of us actually very much about the transition between light and dark absolutely yeah it's it's the it's the you know I'm a fairly extreme person and I've lived a pretty extreme life of a lot of a lot of travel and a lot of movement and almost too much in a way that's really affected you know my my shape of mental health I was diagnosed bipolar last year right before Heather and I got into that studio so that's what I was coming in with and then needing to understand like how much my mental states was inter is intertwined with the work that I make and they're not separate again because like your body's not your mind isn't separate from your body you know that it's the same it's the same thing you know so you know I was going from like very very extreme highs of like all these ideas and just go go go and traveling to this country that country just almost constantly and then my version of the pandemic also was that I it was the first year and I think 15 years that I got to actually just be in one place in one state one time zone for an entire year I literally never had that since I graduated college and so this you know my my piece is called temperance and it's it's very much about our relationship knowing that how much other has or is teaching me how to be grounded from those very high places and then also knowing like how to how to move move through the very dark places that I go with my own depression which is which is immobilizing right absolute depression is absolutely immobilizing and it's it's and it's made worse by isolation and it's and it's cured or not cured but it's it's it's helped through connection through being with people and then having you know it being there for each other to help you know lift up and just be be in those places that you are you know but you're not alone absolutely well and that's interesting too that leads to another question I have I'd really like to hear about how your what connects to the idea of mental health and neurodiversity and how you find in your choreographic and dance practices and also in outreach to the community how you find a place to talk about mental health to address it and you know so kind of work through some of the many layers associated with that big concept yeah I think something that's been really special about the connection that I have with Riley is that because we have an understanding of what it's like to to struggle with mental health what it's like to struggle with to struggle with depression is that we're able to be so honest with each other and we're in a place where like if one of us is really struggling or if one of us needs support in a different way where we're able to offer it to each other and that we're I think working together to acknowledge how important it is to be attuned to what's happening and to like what's going on with our mental health alongside of the process and allowing for that to like to some extent inform like how much and when we're working on things and that makes sense yeah yeah you know I mean we're we're making we're making dance like that's what that's what we're doing and if if we're in a place where like like Riley knows that January is not a time for him to travel and perform then then let's just not let's just not do it then and let's find it let's do it and at a different time and in a different place following this and like you know it's like there's this way of like you know you're very aware of what what's happening to the self the inside of you but then you also what's helpful to me I think what's helpful I think to us is like to scale out to scope out and see that you're part of a bigger cycle a bigger system and I know I know now because of that diagnosis that I can predict how and when and why I'm gonna be elevated or I'm gonna be really low and that it's some of it is definitely due to just how my mind work my brain works but it's also about the seasons and the time zones and and the things that I can't control but I'm I'm going to be a part of whether or not I want to right and and I find that a very comforting thing because it means that it just helps me be in the moment and not feel so much like I have there's something in me that I have to fix but I have to you know in terms of we change about who exactly right and I feel like also that kind of cyclical responsiveness that you're talking about it kind of goes back to this place of you know one's mental state is you know it's what you inhabit and it's how you approach the world and it's not necessarily something that has to change to adhere to a normative standard right and there can be severe challenges that come with you know whatever it is that we bring to the world and what we've been handed but there's also like beautiful positive like productive things that come from it yeah absolutely I mean I definitely will I definitely can say that a lot of the work that I make in pretty much all of the forms all the art that I make a lot of it is made I don't know maybe all of it maybe most of it is made from from hypomania you know hypomania is you know an elevated an elevated mood an elevated state of mind we're like in my experience you feel like it's just like constant stream of ideas and inspiration and you start just you know see connections everywhere and like oh if I do that and you almost feels like I can I can see in the future a little bit or it feels almost mystical in a lot of ways so it's it but it's a flame you have to take care of because if you don't and I've had this many many times we're like I it's it's it's pulling me along and then the flame gets too bright and then I get burned but yet you have access to this thing to tap into that you know if you can't control it you can at least kind of know that it's there right and you can allow it to work with you right and like you know how what Heather was saying about January like that's I've tried for many years like it's just really hard winners and and at some point I was like why am I still trying to work and why am I still trying to travel and work in January like I just need to be at home in South Portland and my with my cat and my and then you know that's what I need right now you know and then knowing that if I give myself to just be that to be in that state of mind for that period of time and be in the moment of it like it does change you know the way that you feel now is not how you're gonna feel later but instead of trying to like force it or feel like oh I should be more productive I should be making our like just just give yourself some time like there's there's time there's time to work with somehow you know I made Portland Dance Month a couple of years ago too where it was like this massive decentralized dance festival here in Portland that was like really just like look at how much dance is happening in Portland and that was also born completely out of hypomania I didn't realize that that was happening to me but it feels good you know it also feels you know if you if you you know control it if you give give it the healthy space it needs you can be incredibly creative and incredibly productive and I know that I'm not the only artist who works that way I think it's another all you know not even artists just everybody I think there's a lot of people who sort of have those cycles and what I think we're lucky right now that we were in an era that we can talk about these things because this is not a new thing for me to go through to live through live with there's no cure for it it's just who I am but like I didn't know at 16 when I was depressed and it was the world just seemed so dark or I didn't know that the crash that I had after college the first time I performed a work of William Forsythe that was like just lasted weeks that that that was something I could talk about or pay attention to yeah and so we we both feel like how can we talk about our work if we're not talking about those things if there's so intimately intertwined you know absolutely yeah that's been a really big shift for me before yeah before Mark had died I had really not spoken openly about the things that I was struggling with or about the ways that my depression was affecting me and even was like really scared to talk about it in the context of my work because I was afraid of what people would think if I was honest about the fact that I was that my work was a way for me to look at these things and to like look at parts of myself that were dark yeah that there was there wasn't another way to look at them and I I feel so grateful that I have this partnership now with somebody where we're able to talk about those things because I think when I was working with Mark we did talk about them but we talked about them in like a very like abstract kind of way where those things were in the room but they weren't necessarily acknowledged outright in the way that Riley and I are practicing right now and yeah that's been a huge shift for me it's one that I still feel uncomfortable in I'm still like I'm getting used to it but I know from conversations that I've been having with some of my other collaborators and people that I've worked with that it's actually really helpful for them and to hear these things and so I think yeah it feels like it's worth it to both of us every time that I've been open about what my mental cycles are like people are receptive I mean it is it's an uncomfortable conversation I think a lot and a lot of ways because they don't really know what it is and it might you know remind them of something that's uncomfortable in their way but I think the word uncomfortable is really important I think I think things that feel uncomfortable are worth paying attention to yeah because they're unfamiliar and I think in that moment and that in that way there's an opportunity for learning learning is not comfortable learning takes work it takes calories like you know yeah you know and it's it's worth otherwise you know you're just sort of staying on the same path that you're always on but if you like if you do the work to hack a new path for yourself into the woods like you know you you'll discover something that is very much there that you just weren't paying attention to before and to do that together is like it's just so much more fun yeah and what you're doing together too is you're building something from it you're not just unearthing it and observing it and moving on but you're you know putting you're re-channeling that work like you know the end of Uncle Vanya sort of points you toward right it's like it's like in there is the power to you know shift yourself into like a dimension of you know like really seeing clearly and really like allowing that message to be broadcast to other people I wish that someone had talked about this when I was 20 I really wish I had heard this or that it wasn't something we've got to be quiet about that like why I'm still doing the same work I'm still I'm still I'm still you know I'm still well I also feel like socially there's so much more recognition of neuro diversity as like just another way for the world to be flexible and expansive and not necessarily to inhabit a problem that has to be corrected but to inhabit a difference that can be you know illuminating productive yeah like this complex everybody has a different biography everyone has a different way of thinking and like allowing the complexity to be there like this is how you think how you work how I work like and then we're together and we're maybe making something the work that's gonna be made it's gonna also inhabit that complexity which is infinitely more interesting than like let's all be in unison and I'll be pretend we're the same people like why you know so you know I think one of the really interesting things for me about the work that you're doing too is how kind of place-based it seems it's really anchored in spaces it's responsive to spaces and I think the mechanics hall itself is such an incredible space to kind of respond to and anchor oneself in in a constructive way and I would love to know a little bit more about kind of the community aspect of your work at the mechanics hall and with Portland ovations and how does this particular example of community involvement or engagement how does it take form right now for you and how does it relate back to a like a wider dance community in this region yeah we yeah again a dance is a social art it happens because people are together and making it happen I ovations you know offered this commission and we were thinking we were looking for places to be in Portland to do this and I this is where we're in mechanics hall right now it's on Congress Street it's right across some Mecca it's it's a really historical building in Portland it's one of the oldest buildings in the city I I I love I love spaces that have history to them I love spaces that have had a lot of life in them I'm less interested in like a brand new building with a you know state-of-the-art technology that's good too but you know there's a different feeling yeah you know it's in a brand new space that nobody's lived in before which is interesting too but in this way like we really wanted to be in a space that has a long history of it you know we've got these paintings that there there was a in their early 1900s there was a dance teacher here who had his little Academy where he was making you know I think it's called the Harvard dip I should know his name at this point but you know there's a lot of a lot of stuff that's happened in this room and so we're just sort of contributing to that by being in the room now and it's so beautiful and the mechanics hall is an organization has been so supportive and so excited about you know bringing something like this in the space that yes it's about the beauty of the space yes it's the history of it but it's also the people that we want to work with and and knowing that the choreographic ideas that we may have as artists are not enough by themselves it takes a community to make it takes a whole team of people to make dance happen you know for Portland so it's been a it's been a wonderful learning curve I think for all of us I don't think through you know with Portland ovations and then mechanics hauling with us like all of us are sort of new to to do this together I think ovations hasn't commissioned work in this way so much and the mechanics all hasn't had this type of performance on the scale before and you know we're just forming our company now this is new for us and so all of us as a as a community are figuring out how this works and how to communicate to each other and how to do the emails and how to you know how to plan things ahead well and there's a lot of trust there right yeah to have the commission come from Portland ovations is like such an act of faith and you know yeah you know just like allowing the creative process to have weight right yeah yeah and yeah we were something we were talking about this morning was that like if it was just Riley and I it would just be us in a studio like talking about these things and like rolling around and like being together in a space but through yeah it's like really through the generosity of these partnerships with ovations and with mechanics hall that cascades movers yeah yeah has to be moves where we rehearse and who are also so supportive of us and the work that we've been doing it's really through those partnerships that this performance is possible and that we're yeah we're able to create a work and then not only like create it but to be able to produce it and to share it and to bring other artists in from out of town to work on it with us and yeah you know three of the dancers have moved our moving here to join us so that this you know we're able to facilitate new dancers to move to Portland to be and then you know to work with us but then they're gonna have their own teaching and they're gonna make their own work maybe and they're gonna make connections so I like to think about the big picture of things a lot and and yes it's about our show and where we want to be and who we want to work with but knowing that you know when you do something like this it doesn't just end at the last show right like there are new connections that you make the people will meet each other audiences will meet each other our dancers are meeting other people from the community and and our and our company practices and we we just love Portland we love Maine I'm from Maine originally and I've spent so much time in other places in the world and you know a couple years ago I needed to feel like I was home somewhere and I realized like actually I'm not gonna feel home anywhere unless it's Maine and and I've had all those all those experiences professionally and artistically and I've been very privileged in that way and it's really important to me to open the door for the people as well and right now the best way to do that is for us to form this company so it's just I mean it's just a joy it's just it's you know really doing it it's really fantastic for me too as someone who's not you know immersed in the practice of dance but is very very interested in it you know as an art form just intellectually just to go back to the idea of observation and what that kind of lets in creatively you're also you know offering the experience of that observation to people who would watch the performances yeah I find to be so powerful you know I mean I know it's you know obviously like the foundation of performance-based art is the fact that it's generative in that way people watch it and people observe it but I don't know it's if you think about it more as a kind of like you know creative responsiveness it gets really interesting yeah totally and I think especially in Portland or in Maine in general there's you know there's been some really great dance artists and organizations over the last few years who have been doing really great work that actually you know it's part of the reason that I ended up moving here was because I came up here for a couple of different things that were happening and then you know got to know Riley and looked around and really liked really liked the community here that you know we've both lived in bigger cities and we've sort of experienced what it's like to be in like a really saturated dance city where there's a lot of performances happening you know like a whole bunch of performances happening every single week and that's not the case here so I think there is something really special about being able to build a company like this and in a place where yeah there is there has been some great dance happening but it certainly hasn't been happening on the same consistent basis that you would get in a in a larger city and then also like you know the about the work that I'm making specifically to I mentioned about like you know the wanting to use the age of a space the age of mechanical like so I'm using music for my piece that I made at Hugh and Oaks a couple years ago and at the Ellis Beauregard a couple of years ago foundation and you know she we brought her to space gallery to perform and you know Sarah Julie and Asher Woodworth were using a lot of doing a lot of you know programming things so it's like even if it's a small thing like we just brought her for that one show at space and now forming a dance company so like it's paying attention to those little moments and those little connections or that one piece of music that I made just by myself in that house and at Hugh and Oaks like there is much a part of of what we're gonna show you know that are as much as what we're making in the last month you know as as other you know as it is otherwise so I love the idea that you know using time in a in a in a more deep way is contributing to to what you see in the moment in the performance just being collected into the moment that you're watching it so could you tell us when the when the performances will be and how to access the tickets yeah so the performances take place in here main mechanics hall ballroom and they're gonna be May 18 1920 and 730 730 and on the after the first show there's gonna be a little premier party and after the last show there's gonna be an artist talk back so if people are interested in hearing more about the work the Friday night show is when we're doing our artist talk back we've also we're opening our company practice to the public at Cascaway Movers on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday at 10 15 to 11 45 for you know our company to train and you know state stay in practice but also to meet new people and new artists who want to who want to you know work on their craft as a dancer so we're hoping that's a place people to you know the community to come we're also you know we sort of taken a bunch of choreographic elements for this piece that were you know we've got our two dances we've got their music and stuff this is also a piece that's gonna be available to be extracted and recontextualized in different ways so here it's called our Wolf on the Lighthouse and then in June June 3 and 4 we're going to San Francisco to the state of play festival at ODC theater and there will be our wolf in the cavern so we're basically taking a lot of the same elements than just reimagining it into a space that is not a ballroom but a theater and then sort of reworking it that way so we very much work sort of in iterations in that way fantastic and all of the information you can go either on our website littlehousedance.com or on Instagram or if you go on Portland Ovations you can find links for tickets and info so through Portland Ovations I can get tickets to the performances yeah fantastic thank you I can't wait