The River’s Way Movement Company
Performing a new evening length show January 10, 11, 16, and 17
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Blaze is delighted to fill the role of director of the River’s Way Movement Company. They feel so lucky to bring their choreographic visions into a collaborative project with four brilliant and magical friends. Through process-based creation built on a foundation of deep love and care among collaborators, the company helps Blaze find and step into their identity as an artist and human.
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Tessa danced through their youth in a quintet of close friends, with the mentorship of their teacher supporting them through the beautiful and brutal process of becoming. Dance has always been a home for Tessa, and in all the many forms that has taken in their life, they never imagined that they’d get to dance and perform again in this way. River’s Way is truly a pipe-dream fantasy come true, and the quintet is a surprising iteration of what dance looked like and meant to them growing up— finding home in the studio as they move, grow, cry, laugh, and eat snacks, surrounded by the sweetness of deep friendship.
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Leila emerges from the same goo as Blaze, Newt, Tessa, and Zoe, and is very happy about this. Leila loves dance, and especially loves the weird, improvisatory process of making an experimental, collaborative piece. Dancing together feels like coming in from the cold.
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Newt’s lifelong relationship to dance is one of endless uncertainty. With occasional sublime peaks as well as dark lows, it serves Newt as a means to develop the skill of allowing discomfort. The transient nature of movement as an art form speaks to Newt’s fluid sense of identity; being as dancing, a sequence of selves ever-changing, enhanced by their contrast, connected by an ephemeral thread.
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Zoe was born in Oregon and travelled far and wide to find their place among other movers. A magical union was forged in 2023, and River’s Way has been Zoe's home for dance ever since. It is an honor for Zoe to have been present at the conception of River’s Way Movement Company, and to anchor her life with rehearsal, creation, and connection. The only thing more fulfilling than sharing a movement project with the other River’s Way dancers is sharing it all with the audience that supports us.
“Actually quite good.”
“We’re using someone’s old skin as a raft.”
We hatch from primordial goo and begin a transformation. Who can we become to each other? How can we survive the uncomfortable process of individuation? As we contend with the grief and joy that come with surrendering the Self back into the whole, we eventually realize: we don’t necessarily “return” to the goo—it’s more that we never left.