Natalie's Dance Magic Research in New Mexico

Hi! ♥

I'm Natalie Deryn Johnson, multidisciplinary artist and choreographer, and I'm bringing six of my most beloved friends and collaborators to Keshet's Makers Space Experience Residency in Albuquerque, NM, where I have been selected to join the Second Cohort of 2023 as a Choreographer in Residence alongside five other dance makers for 10 days. I have been granted time and space to deepen and share my teaching style, return to the dance community as an artist, and generate material for future dance film creations. We are looking to our beautiful and expansive community - that means you, yeah you ! - to help us get to New Mexico and make this dream a reality.

This moment is a triumph and career milestone because I am returning to creating within a group context after spending a majority of my dance career as a solo artist and managing chronic pain. For context, last year I couldn’t bend over to pick up a pot in the kitchen or contribute to house chores due to hypermobility complications. In this moment, I have an expanded understanding of embodiment, appreciation for movement, and a renewed vigor after a time adjusting to a slower lifestyle.

Outside of the professional development, community, and atmosphere that this residency affords, my time at Keshet promises to be a safe place to workshop materials that contribute to my emergence into the next phase of my choreographic career. After many years of building a movement practice, within both performance and intuitive healing contexts (MysticDare.com), this is the start of a new public phase, and the beginning of a longer vision of creating dance film projects.

Joining me for this project are my beloved friends, and renowned dancers, Alexander Anderson, Lenin Fernandez, Liana Zhen-ai Kleinman, and Trinity Dawn Bobo (Tri), as well as Rhys Tivey (musician and dancer) and cinematographer Melissa Wu. Together we will develop a creative work that builds on themes rooted in what has motivated my solo work: the relationship of grief and celebration, sacrifice and devotion, sensuality and eros, isolation and connection. We will investigate and play with mature and charming embodiment, and build a new movement story that is emergent and intuitive.

I can’t express what a dynamite team and moment this is. Each mover has their own precious, intelligent, and gorgeous relationship to movement, sensibility, and language to communicate lived experience, in earthy and expansive ways. The inspiring thing to note is that when you fund our attendance, you are funding not only the logistics of this endeavor (paying artists well is hard + important!) but also the expansion of our incredible creative community and the way we work together. You are also making an investment in creative work yet to be completed, and in a vision of movement and the world that is sensitive, excavating, and boldly surprising.

I hope you’ll join us on this journey - and thank you ♥

Ps!

First ten people to donate above $500 receive a Lois Greenfield Print. Thank you Lois Greenfield Studio for your donation and continued support.

Pps . . . You are welcome to message our campaign so we can personally thank you. Much love to anonymous donors as well.

♥

Budget Insight:

Budget reflects travel (flights + gas + rental car), airbnb, per diems (food), artist fees, and media - This allows dancers + artists to afford to join me for two weeks and be paid for their labor in this working experience, as they step away from their daily lives in order to prioritize this creative endeavor.