Rain (2023)
I was honored to headline the 2023 Wandering Dance Festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts with my company, Kia the Key & Company. Presented by the Berkshire Theatre Group in association with Jacob’s Pillow, the festival was a weekend of workshops and performances celebrating dance in the Berkshire region. I led the featured masterclass, shared my choreographic work with the public, and presented a repertory project performed by Five College Dance students.
The featured work, Rain, was a deeply personal and visceral exploration of water as both a physical element and a metaphorical force. Rooted in my earliest childhood memory of water as a space for reflection, play, and renewal, Rain emerged as a spiritual cleansing. A release of emotional weight through communal movement. During the creative process, I began by sharing my own story and invited each collaborator to reflect on their personal relationship to water. These intimate conversations revealed a wide range of emotional and cultural connections that directly shaped the movement vocabulary of the piece. The choreography embodied cycles of release and rebirth, allowing each dancer to express their story through improvised freestyles and collaboratively crafted structures that honored the presence of water in their lives.
In performance, the dancers moved with such intensity and vulnerability that by the end, sweat streamed from their faces like rainfall. Their physical exhaustion became a powerful testimony to the labor of healing and the human need for restoration. Rain invited the audience to experience dance not only as performance, but as ritual, and a collective act of connection, nourishment, and transformation.
In the news: The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You (Yes, You) At The Wandering Dance Festival – Rural Intelligence
