Hers. Mine. Ours.
On June 14th, 2019, my older and only sister, Katie, ended her life.
In honor of her and all of the sisters, daughters, mothers and grandmothers past, present and future…
This piece is about the grieving process surrounding her death and the unspoken layers of loss, sadness, anger, resentment, fear and familial ties in relationship to the women in my family lineage that has surfaced because of it. Focusing on the concept of Yin energy as well as finding inspiration for movement from the four elements…”Hers. Mine. Ours.” is a testament of what I have inherited as well as my own concepts of what it means to be a woman, a sister, a daughter, a mother, a granddaughter and a wife and how to navigate finding and owning my own voice and power within my body through movement.
How do we move forward?
We bring them with us.
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In November of 2019, when I was able to start gently moving again 4 months after my sister’s suicide, I would book a weekly 2 hour rehearsal at Gibney Dance. I would turn on music, lie on the floor and sob. Then I’d write sister a letter, scream at her in my head and then allow myself to move for the last 30 minutes or so and film whatever came out.
I used the movement patterns that my body repeated over and over in those processing rehearsals to create phrases that I then created this piece with. Rocking, spinning, screaming, floating and running.
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How does a grieving body process pain?
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​A moving memoir.
I'm right here
AMY: Somatic Story
"...am I sure?"
EILEEN: Somatic Story
"...am I ready?"
In early 2023, I was working on a movement piece called “Stuck” exploring the concept of energetic stagnation and was dealing with a deep lack of motivation and inspiration. While in the rehearsal process, struggling to create this piece about the space between what was and what is possible, who you no longer are and who you’re becoming and the subsequent feeling of needing to move on while struggling to let go…I realized that I needed some support and a creative partner. I reached out to my dear friend, Amy, and I came up with a plan for us to send each other 1 gesture a day for 40 days (it ended up taking us about 60 days total) to then create a short film of all the gestures together so we could see, feel and sense the language of our soma. It was deeply moving and incredibly challenging…it also alchemized SO MUCH energy. Our 40 gestures have been sequenced above to show our individual movement process.
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We are creating a bi-coastal short film “I’m Right Here” from the movement phrases we intuitively created over the 40 days, spoken from our visceral voice, telling our somatic story. We were both in such different, yet culminating times in our lives where we needed deep permission and loving witnessing with space creating and space holding for the unfolding and this movement practice revealed and released the initial catalyst for the original piece; we became unstuck.
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The phrases underneath our videos are what we heard our bodies asking us to explore.
When you watch our movement...what do you hear our bodies saying?
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A somatic story.