The Time Is Now
Director / Choreographer / Performer / Producer / Editor / Sound Engineer / Costume Designer
Dana transformed through daily actions to make this work possible.
After focused years of training and diversifying her skills and techniques in the Atlanta dance community, Dana returned to her choreographic talent to bring her work back to the stage with a renewed understanding of herself as a mover and maker.
For this show, Dana transformed through daily actions to make this work possible. She built a network of support, selling 85 tickets, constructed and honed her work each day with her selected team of dancers, all the while training for and choreographing her first lyra performance that she worked diligently to collaborate with vendors to make the rigging possible. Her video performance, “Selves” was created with the intention of showcasing the film as part of the stage performance, as well, though the equipment could not allow it. Dana sewed her own costumes and sound designed and engineered the music, which includes found audio.
Her performance was shared and celebrated widely via her support network. While her mother could not attend the performance at the time due to illness, Dana knows she is proud.
Artist Statement
What I am interested in is the nature of desire and how the dynamics of power and violence pervade language and deteriorate relationships of all kinds. I am also terrified about the rise of technology and fear that people aren’t feeling, expressing, connecting with and respecting nature. I’m afraid for my future kids; that this disconnection from each other and from ourselves is what will contribute to and perpetuate the abuse of power, not knowing oneself, the devaluing of women, and the destruction of our Earth.
It’s a lot. It’s heavy. It’s scary. And it is courageous to continue to love, to continue to be vulnerable when you are always risking, always coming up against these dynamics of power in a country that rewards and laughs at the raping of women and polices us on how we can and can’t care for our bodies.
My hope for my performances is to RE-CLAIM—reclaim ourselves, our bodies, our hearts, our rights. To celebrate, above all. And to hopefully invite the audience in to experience, for those moments, a sense of relief, of understanding, of power, of belonging.
