Phrase: colonizing nationhood and gender

Commissioned by the Contemporary Dance Theater for their Area Choreographers Festival, Phrase premiered June 3 + 4, 2016 at Cincinnati's Jarson-Kaplan Theater at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.

Choreography: Anna Brown Massey with Biag Gaongen
Music: Sons of Kemet, James Brown, Learn-tagalog.com, Bruce Springsteen

I worked with the inimitable Biag Gaongen–formerly of Cloud Gate Dance Theater, Ballet Philippines, and Tanzcompagnie der Oper Graz–to develop a duet in which we employed text, mimicry, and exacting cultural movement references to comment on the complexities of our own identities. At one point I lip sync an American man confidently and poorly teaching a Tagalog lesson as Biag meets my exaggerated gestures with his leading versions. Throughout this work we consider the colonizing methods of dance and language.