Women, Like Water
a work celebrating the power of women and femmes
created by Kristen Hudecz
From my perspective, studying dance and social work, I see art as the ultimate vessel for depicting and deconstructing our realities, our passions, our politics, and so forth, and further, for sharing that which results with others. I have often studied dance in the realm of socially engaged art, but for one of my final performances, I had a yearning to instead create something I simply enjoy dancing and watching.
Women, Like Water is a work that places movement informed by strength and femininity on several of my dancers and dear friends (friends who I may note, celebrate and exude femininity regardless of gender). It is curious, at times mysterious, and it always returns to a display of movement and energy rippling through the group, like the soft yet powerful waves of a river.
Photo by Nicole Lockhart
Please join me in celebrating the few fragments we are able to share of this work and these incredible dancers' performances during this confusing, new, digital time.
With gratitude,
Kristen
More on the music:
To set the work, I opted to explore two contrasting forms of accompaniment; the first being the live performance of a female, Vermont-hailing folk a cappella trio, in Mountain Man's "River."
After setting up this world of movement in "River," I arranged a transition to explore the same core phrases set to Glass Animals and Denzel Curry's "Tokyo Drifting." Dave Bayley, the writer of this track, has expressed that the set up is simple: writing a song from the perspective of his most confident and powerful alter-ego, in fact, a version of him if he had been a character in the video game Streetfighter. This section reimagines my celebration of women and femmes with the same confidence and arrogance of this male stereotype.
Special thanks to dancers Jon Bargas, Claire Binguit, Abby Bick, Natalia de Miguel Annoni, Sam Kreig, Paul Manzo, Mackenna McKnight, Julianna Shatrau and Raleigh Shimrack for participating in this work.