On her new work, Lori Teague says: "How the Human Got Its Big Head looks at humans at our worst and at our best. It frames what is most important about our evolution, which is the acceptance of change, variation and difference. We pass through a number of stages of morality as we mature, and we mature over a lifetime, just as we are adapting. And so we are, in our best light, shedding our prejudices. Now that's evolution. Equally fascinating are the complex traits that influence our survival-traits like fear, arrogance, greed and hate. How do these dynamics impose a reality on the life span of any species? I wonder if we can imagine our own extinction. This is an important story of interrelatedness. All "other things," things that we might define as having more power or speed, heightened senses or energy, even more access to food than us, are probably just six degrees away from Kevin Bacon. And if attraction, desire, and curiosity draw us closer to "other things," it is inevitable that two different beings will collide or connect and produce variation."
Lori will be creating new work for a select group of Emory dancers and two professional dancers. She will cast in the fall and work in the studio through mid-February. She has begun work on a solo in order to plant some choreographic seeds. This piece and David Neumann’s work will be performed as part of the same concert, providing two very different approaches to the evolution topic.
Teague has found questions around the topic of evolution to be plentiful and fascinating. She is considering ideas such as: a thought stabilized in the mind affecting the physical versus the creation of a thought affecting physical evolution. She will also explore if we are somehow connected to the “unknown,” if we are comfortable with it, and if we do evolve differently than someone who is more comfortable with “knowing.”
Teague’s research of the body and the design of movement coming from the body will reveal a relationship to the way in which we relate, act, and communicate in our daily lives. It will also explore the manifestation of our internal responses. It will create a dialogue between what we question and what we already understand. And sometimes it simply explores our own curiosity and makes us question how curiosity affects evolution.
Teague’s choreographic work has followed a pattern of change in relationship to her consciousness and awareness of self. How she is evolving physically, mentally and emotionally? Even works, which are stimulated by an external source, ultimately reveal a metaphoric relationship to self through the movement vocabulary or the shape of the body. Teague is powerfully guided by imagery. Another powerful tool for Teague is the embodiment of images, which hold physiological and psychological components. Images created in her work emphatically play a role in describing, depicting or representing how she is changing.
The content of Teague’s work has always been attached to the themes of risk-taking, gravity, momentum, and contact. She is particularly curious about how these physical themes will play out while they are attached to ideas of evolution. She will also continue to discover an authentic movement vocabulary in order to reveal languages that provide a context for understanding how our truths evolve.
The process of creating always involves the dancers input. The choreographer and dancers can share and create the vocabulary together, and Teague can create the vocabulary influenced by the patterns and habits, strengths and styles of each individual mover. This collaboration will yield a dance created from the dancers, not one imposed on them. Teague will involve them tremendously in this process - thinking, researching in the body, and developing the material. The project is significant in our dance community as it is interdisciplinary and it is about our future.