“As a dance-maker, I wonder about capacity—a cavity in the archived mind that needs filling. I fumble with identity as a portal to generate fabricated memories and dreamlike, meditative atmospheres of longing. As a transracial Korean Adoptee, I am surrounded by inaccurate narratives and fragmented documentation. Untangling this mess through practice and performance, I attempt to connect to a culture that is not quite my own. I reimagine lost connections in the body to build a mechanism of belonging. Slipping between clipping roots and unearthing historical narratives, I am interested in expressing complication and plurality—a learning of the past to envision the future. Maybe roots can flourish in detachment.”

“Departure Study of Mother/land Fabric” is a movement, textual, and textile solo performance, conceived and performed by Annie Heath with visual bojagi design by Leonie Castelino. Within rehearsal and performance, the work constructs/disassembles/rebuilds narrative, while journeying backwards or retrograding Heath’s body to the time of conception. Movement and spoken text expresses the loss of roots, summoning subconscious and fabricated memories of mother/child, land/home. The body evokes natal intimacy and a womb-like sensibility, oscillating between birthing and being birthed; the pain, sensuality?, and feeling of fresh emergence. A visual design takes form in bojagi, a semi-transparent reversible patchwork composed of smaller geometric shapes that holds a utilitarian context in Korean History. Wrapping and warming the space, the bojagi womb ‘leaks’—an energetic release of pressure and a slow exhale centers the experience.

Heath is a choreographer and dancer. Her work has been presented most notably at New York Live Arts, ISSUE Project Room, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, and Triskelion Arts. She is currently a 2019-2021 Fresh Tracks resident artist at New York Live Arts.