Projects

The image is of one foot wrapped in sugar wax. The wax stretches up towards the top of the image.

Paper Roots

Paper Roots is a new work by Rosely Conz and Bailey Anderson exploring the current political landscape from two distinct vantage points. In this new work, Rosely Conz explores uprooting through the use of sugar taffy while Bailey Anderson investigates race and flying while covered in white paper airplanes. This duet is divided by a wall separating the two, yet when viewed together the works comment back and forth on each other. ​

The Weight of Sharing: Resilience, Resistance, and Ethics

As somatic practitioners we are constantly sharing in various ways: as teachers, presenters, facilitators, performers, and artists. With that sharing, comes the weight of ethical treatment and awareness of patterns of resistance and resilience. In the this two part workshop and performance, Bailey Anderson and Amanda Benzin will draw from feminist and disability pedagogical practices and training as well as versatile backgrounds across many forms of dance and somatic practice. This work was shared at the Body Mind Centering Association 2018 conference at Smith College.  

Image of five dancers moving around a white square on a green cement floor. There are jars and marbles within the square.

Befriending Forgeting

This work by Bailey Anderson uses marbles and process-based choreography to explore what it means to forget while dancing. Culminating from research about dementia and Alzheimer's this work rethinks of chaos as transformative and plays with popular culture references of forgetfulness.

Images of the residency and work are by Corey Damocles and Kaiyue Zhang. In this image dancers are sitting on chairs in a row facing a diagonal. The closest dancer is looking down and has their legs crossed.

Feels like I've got a PIT in my stomach... got a cup overflowing with T

In the week-long residency at Michigan State University for this piece, Bailey and the Orchsis company unpacked the complexities of pity using an embodied disability studies approach. We looked at the dehumanizing and connecting aspects of pity, how it has been used to marginalize people, and how the use of pity continues complex power dynamics and enacts ideas of normalcy.  We hope you have a nice cup of tea after the show and discuss PitT. Link to more information and excerpts. 

Photo is of 4 dancers on the edge of a stage, dressed in paper airplanes, and yellow life vests.

Just Wait...

 Just Wait… is an exploration of timing and culmination on research of crip time and the impact of waiting upon the body. Bringing together elements of paper airplanes, life vests, and written letters this work engages chance choreography to intertwine form with content in asking dancers to literally “wait” on stage and the audience to experience waiting as well.​ Link to more information and excerpts. 

Photo is of scrabble pieces laid out in rows and columns.

Scrability​

 Scrability is a work that comes out of research around learning disabilities within academia. The work explores Sara Whatley’s viewing strategies for watching dance and disability combined with a mess of scrabble pieces, and the inability to hold onto and digest words. This work was described as “smart, funny, and physically lush” by David Dorfman, who was part of the selection committee that produced my work at American College Dance Association’s Northwest Regional Gala in 2016.​ Link to excerpt. 

Laundry Line

“Laundry Line” is a section of a evening-length work that explores “networks” from various frameworks. The research for the work included elements from the book, “Networks” which is part of the Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art collection edited by Lars Bang Larsen. The evening-length work explores what it means to connect through lines, ecology, technology, and through daily tasks such as washing dishes and clothing.
Group work, premiered in Lexington, Virginia at the Lenfest Center for the Arts at Washington and Lee University on May 19, 2018. Dancers are from the Halestone Foundation.

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Series of Invisible Dances

This ongoing project is A Series of “Invisible” Dances, dances embedded within other dances, that are not created as part of the centralized work.  These dances reflect those in society who are found at the margins and mimic the ways in which bodies can become decentered.  Within each work choreographed between 2015-2025 there will be an embedded “invisible” dance happening in the margins of the stage, space, or performance venue.  These works are developed from exploring disability methodology and concepts of invisibilization and have currently addressed the idea of suicide, and anxiety.  This project will culminate in a drawing together of all the invisible dances into a larger work exploring the idea of invisibilization within society. ​​​

Skin

Directed by Mark Sutch Professor of Theatre at Davidson College
Choreographed by Bailey Anderson​
“Naomi Iizuka's riff on Georg Büchner's Woyzeck tells the story of a young couple working desperately to make sense of their relationship while toiling to survive. Skin moves with supernatural fluidity, creating a beautiful play in which we feel the world squeezing tighter and tighter.”​ Link to Review of Production and photos. 

Picture is of a person sitting in the middle of a circle of x-rays, with a tutu, and bandages wrapped around their chest. They are looking down and are also wearing purple medical gloves.

Traces

Choreographed by Bailey Anderson with Videography by Aundrea Anderson. Traces is a Dance for Camera exploring the medicalization of the body through film and movement. With a intergenerational cast this work uses gestures, pickled vegetables, and costumes to convey the interior landscape of those existing in medical spaces.​ Click for Link to Dance for Camera

Picture of what looks like academic paper.

Disability Aesthetics Writing Project

This essay/installation by Bailey Anderson, with coding by Tommy Rhodes is an iterative interdisciplinary project which offers the idea of dyslexia as an aesthetic choice. The coding of the web page will randomly rearrange letters within the text and replace words where specified. Letters will rearrange more quickly the longer a user is on the page, and will begin at a faster rate when viewed at evening. The timing and durational components artistically mimic some dyslexics' difficulty reading at different times of day and seeks to illustrate the fluid rather than static nature of dyslexia and the body. ​Link to publication in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies. 

One person biting the other persons arm, below them is text spelled out in Scrabble pieces "Gluten Free" on either side of the scrabble pieces are pieces of grass and onions.

The Otherland

 Evening length work created by Rosely Conz and Bailey Anderson, The Otherland fuses solo, duet, tree and ensemble work exploring the intersections of disability and foreignness. Through set, props, and movement this performance work explores disorientation, the inability to consume words and languages, and ideas of marginality.​ Link to more information and excerpts. 

Spring Awakening

Produced by blank slate theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota with Direction by Adam Arnold and Choreography by Bailey Anderson. Review can be found here. 

Sedimenting and Eroding: An Embodied Expression and Experience of Relationship

This two part workshop by Amanda Benzin and Bailey Anderson begins with an embodied expression by the artists, followed by a guided movement experience and discussion, which both explore grief, rejection, and nuanced relationships through somatic embodiment and BMC organ and fluid systems.​ This work was shared at the Body Mind Center Association 2017 conference in San Marcos Texas. 

What is Modern Dance? Or, The Toothbrush Dance

This dance was developed in collaboration with the dancers at Halestone Foundation. Together we explored stereotypes and tropes of modern and post-modern dance styles and then created an complied dance that explores the intersections of these forms. Special Thanks to the the Lenfest Center for the Arts at Washington and Lee University for being the venue for the premiere of this event.