Clearing

being with what is,
and then,
figuring out what else you can make possible.

clearing practice began as a letting go, a return, and a joining.

In March 2020, I was rehearsing a new dance, an improvised solo. I was halfway through a 4 year Feldenkrais training program. Locked inside, I went to my roof and danced. I went to my living room floor, lay on my back, and listened to my smallest movements. After a decade of trying to de-programmed myself of my ballet training, and feeling exhausted from the battle, I decided to let it loose. And more. I tried on Tiktok dances. Shapes. Minimalism. I let myself become characters, other performers, and dreams.  Dancing alone day after day, I had no worry of the critical eyes NYC audiences. I wondered, borrowing an idea from Feldenkrais, that if I supported my habits, could I keep relaxing and freeing up my brain and body to try on new forms, shapes, techniques, rhythms? Could I create a container that would guide me into an ideal improvisational state - a flow state full of intention.? Another Feldenkrais idea that was in use - follow your curiosity, let yourself make mistakes, be in the confusion until it feels productive. 

clearing practice, by name, took shape during the fall and winter of 2022 after I had been living in Los Angeles for 2 years. The clearing score was:

first dance: start with what is / what’s easy or familiar 
second dance:  what else? 

The word clearing for me evokes the feeling of moving past, or over something and returning or arriving in an openness. It calls us into the score, into our own discovery of what’s there and where we find our open places.

Over the years, I’ve added new scores and structures to layer in different themes, emphasizing the role of witnesses, space, performativity, and collaboration / group scores. I’ve often taught or done a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson before a clearing score, as a preparatory experience of deep listening and feeling.

clearing practice requires the dancer to quickly learn about their own individual materials and process of making meaning through movement. It asks the dancers to create and imagine from only themself. If one is used to receiving external prompts and direction, which through education and training most all of us are, a feeling of doubt or confusion is encountered. This is part of it and the feeling of not doing it correctly is in fact necessary to the practice. The performer of the score must experience trial and error — or in other words, organic learning. To go from one place to another, like the score asks one to do, there must be resistance, learning, change. Over time, our consciousness of the learning process becomes more crisp and our ability to make intuitive choices becomes easier.

In public classes, workshops, and working groups, these scores support the emergence of the individual’s innermost voice and most liberated presence. They strengthen connectivity to each other, building social and emotional maps for how to be, how to work together, how to change.

Open Studio Shows

  1. November 12 + 16, 2025 at CRAWLSPACE

Workshops/Classes

  • CRAWL SPACE ~ October 8, 15, 22, 28, November 5, 2024

  • Pieter Performance Space ~ June 24, September 9, October 6, November 3, December 1, 2023

  • Basic Space LA ~ April 8 & 15, 2023