Ferrall Artist in Residence

Hi.

My MFA thesis, Stunning!, was performed January 30th - February 1st, 2025 in Urbana Illinois

Developed across 27 two-hour rehearsals, 4 rehearsal showings, 1 designer run, 1 invited dress, and 1 full production tech period.
It can be summarized as a dance project about what happens to our bodies when we live online.

⇧YOU CAN READ THE WHOLE THESIS up THERE⇧

and/or

⬇︎YOU CAN WATCH SAVE SOME TIME AND WATCH SOME VIDEOS down HERE⬇︎

OCTOBER 2024

Screenshot

I set out to create a choreography of the glitching, fractured screen I saw the world through. I was feeling Zoom fatigue and Scroll fatigue and Doom fatigue and wondered if performance could capture that.

Layer 1

The initial screenshot acts as an anchor and an invisibility shield. The green screen goes up, the dancers disappear, but only on the screen. In real life you're seeing trained bodies moving in coordination playing pretend with green fabric.

I find it impossible to ever make a dance that is not earnest and little silly, but by leaning into that I feel allowed to create something with layered meaning.

Layer 2

The performers loop, lag, and overload on purpose. They bark, and grimace, and growl and yelp. Because they're human, because they're frustrated, and distracted.

Because instead of distraction becoming a failure in an economy of attention, distraction becomes profitable.

Layer 3

In the world of Stunning!, I want screen fatigue to become choreographic material and challenge what it means to perform when and if attention is product.

DECEMBER 2024

I believe Stunning! as a performance most effectively reshapes attention using the embodiment and labor of live performance.

Labor in this dance is not only that of navigating The Digital but doing so seamlessly as if second nature while also navigating choreography that requires technique.

Layer 1

Through repeated Loops or Layers of video, audience begin to understand that a world is being built.

The Work, and the dancers' on-stage Work, adapts to systems of optimization, surveillance, and constant visibility by building one live by any means necessary.

Using the tools available.

Layer 2

Stunning! was made with a lot of experiments. A DIY-ness permeates all of the dance. Something carried over from making work in Quarantine.

Layer 3

But it is my desire as an educator, to bridge the gap between perception and understanding. Because otherwise, technology can seem like magic.

I want dancers and artists to live in an expansive future, an optimistic future.

And I believe performance can make visible the pressures shaping contemporary attention and usher in more human imaginations.

January 2025

The loops come out of necessity which then became aesthetic.

Stunning! is meant to stun, is meant to disorient, but also teach.

By having the same choreography multiple times, audience can feel at ease about "seeing the right thing."

At some point it may become a wash, at some point you may realize the videos are as live as the dancing.

While it is a dance about being online too much.

It is also a question of what the buffering, Zoom lags, browser tabs, and the emotional turmoil of laboring with technology is meant to accomplish. Is this the creative outlet now? Or is it okay to dream of something else. Is it okay to misuse the tools at our disposal?

This comes from my own feeling of being tired of "clocking in" for a part time job for tech Billionaires.

For selling my attention, for scrolling, and scrolling for unknown amounts of time with nothing to show for it.

The dancers repeat things until they break.

Because that’s what the internet does to us.

Stunning! is about attention, surveillance, and why exhaustion somehow became an aesthetic.

And if your nervous system feels glitchy, this piece is also about you.

Google Drive

Ferrall Artist in Residence

Google Docs