I want to make "human scale" dances. By human in scale, I mean placing the emphasis on the unglamorized body, the body in more intimate moments, when it is fallible or agitated or inept. My intent is not to create merely pedestrian movement, but to make dynamic movement that is a combination of gesture and partnering. The challenge is to find the velocity and force in the movement and yet still retain its intimate, conversational quality. My interest in "human scale" extends beyond an interest in an expanded movement vocabulary, however. I am equally interested in the texture of the human voice and the effect it has on movement. Since my early days as a choreographer, I have been trying to forge some territory where dance and language/sound could co-exist.

I want each dance to be a "telling", telling with the body (where have I been, where does my longing reside) and telling with the voice (this is how I see the world). Far from being contradictory, I see these two ways of telling as innately linked. I want to liberate the dancer from his/her silence and create a total theater that is rigorously crafted but intimately personal.

In the last five years I have become particularly interested in the power of song, how movement and sung phrases can be combined to tell something in a simple way. I feel like I am searching for a kind of "folk" art that can be expertly crafted and yet feel unsophisticated, naive, credulous. This feels like a better medium for talking about my favorite subject, "inappropriate" people, those who are out of the mainstream, insignificant, small, out of touch. By giving them a voice (quite literally), I feel I am humanizing them and elevating them at the same time.