Lucie News and New Choreography!

Dearest friends,
The wheel of the seasons keeps on turning. Since my last message (over a year ago!) a great number of things have occurred. Let's start where we are.

I am about to graduate from the University of Washington with a Masters of Fine Art in Dance degree. Can you believe it?! It's been a wild ride and I have been grateful to share it with some of the most inspiring dance academics around. I am finishing up my thesis work, teaching, and choreographing for the MFA Dance Concert next week.

What follows is a little recap of what I've been up to!

Last spring I premiered Glow Up, a dance made for twelve young women in the undergraduate dance department. It was a light and playful look at the wonderful weirdness of community. I had a blast working with them and designing glowing balloons to light their way as a part of the MFA Dance Concert. You can view the piece from 2018 here: https://vimeo.com/287129886

Last summer I completed original research that focused on creative collaboration between scientists and artists. I invited three doctoral students in the early stages of their work into the studio to try their hand at dancing as a method of investigating their research questions. What emerged was an inspiring look at the stimulating effect of applying dance based inquiry to the scientific process. You can watch my presentation of my findings here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SNAAR-AtZwoablgoMbl32r9nviEVCcGK/view?usp=sharing 

This past fall I performed with the Chamber Dance Company at UW's Meany Hall. The program was full of fantastic pieces including works by Lucinda Childs, Joseph Gifford, and Daniel Charon. It was a challenging and satisfying run. You can see me dance Gifford's The Pursued here: https://vimeo.com/300579847/904de93ab3 

Over the winter I prepared my thesis which is to create and teach a course. I am in the midst of that at this very moment. It has been a joy to teach this class which synthesizes my research in creativity, life sciences and philosophy. I have titled it Embodied Ecology for Creative Practice. I have an intrepid group of students from many different disciplines and we have been having a blast learning about how to use natural systems as models for creative work. We even went on a field trip to learn about how beavers create their habitats so that we can better understand how we humans might choreograph ours. 

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And now here we are! May, 2019!
I am looking forward to celebrating the end of a wonderful experience here at UW but not before one last hurrah. I will premiere a new work for six fantastic undergraduate women as a part of this years UW MFA Dance Concert. In this piece I explore the archtypal power of the Rusalki. Characters from Slavic folklore, the Rusalki are the spirits of young women who died untimely or unjust deaths, and are believed to have the power to regulate the seasons, and agricultural abundance. They have a tendency to curse or kill those who cross them and bless those who appease them. The piece, entitled Singing Over the Bones, is an investigation of life and death cycles as symbolically represented by the female form and how these cycles function in contemporary culture. It is also a personal exploration of the liminal cultural space I occupy as the daughter of a Croatian immigrant mother and an Anglo-American father. I drew on my years of folk dancing as well as my theatrical dance experience when developing the movement. It is a convergence of many things and I look forward to sharing it with you all.

I hope you can come and spend an evening with us! (Consider it an early birthday present to me.) As I move into a new chapter of my life, I look forward to creating projects that utilize what I have learned over the past three years of education, both at UW and theTamalpa Institute. I am eternally grateful to those who shared this journey with me and I believe there is fertile ground for the seeds we have cultivated to take root. I intend to do some planting.


With Love,
Lucie

MFA Dance Concert
May 15 - 19, 2019

Wednesday - Saturday 7:30pm
Sunday 2:00pm
University of Washington
Meany Studio Theater 

Tickets and Information Here:
https://dance.washington.edu/events/2019-05-15/mfa-concert