2015

Dissertation: “Knowing Bodies / Bodies of Knowledge: Eight Experimental Practitioners of Contemporary Dance”

Artistic Director, Gravity

Curtis’ Dances for Non/Fictional Bodies is a multi-component performance-based project examining the role(s) of imagined societal ideals as a kind of “fictional body” that disables individuals in terms of our ability to see others, and be seen, as beautiful, empowered, and autonomous. Physically and conceptually the work deconstructs movement vocabulary and ideals of beauty based in socially imagined perfections of form that rarely exist in actual bodies. The work examines difference as a virtue, finding the unique beauty in the idiosyncrasy of each individual performer. In the meetings between performers we will highlight the synergistic and esthetic necessity of difference, and thus implicitly propose that the audience re-consider their own definitions and limitations of beauty and empowerment.