to be frank
is a return and a departure
a mourning created in night
a soliloquy of absence
complete unto itself.
It is a celebration of embodied memory
Inspired by hakim bellamy’s poem
When Love Gets Home.
for those who never find Home.
It is for the words left unsaid.
An exploration of old truths in a changed body.
It is not intended to be melancholic in nature
[though there may always be something missing]
but instead a celebration of agency
and things that feel good.
It is a movement for the moment
When the blizzard coats the ground
so we paint our presence in the snow.
And it melts.
Natalia Duong
February 14, 2013
* * *
Natalia Duong is a performance artist, choreographer, and scholar, native to the San Francisco Bay Area. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on Kinesthetic Empathy as a resource for conflict resolution and the embodied transmission of trauma as exemplified in the bodies of those affected by Agent Orange. She has collaborated with artists to perform internationally in Edinburgh, Paris, Uganda, and Vietnam, where she recently led a community-based devised theater piece that was performed at the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. Natalia is also the Founder and Artistic Director of PAO, a movement collective interested in how war is inherited in the body. She is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Performance Studies at Tisch School for the Arts, New York University, and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University with a BA in Psychology and Dance. She currently lives in Brooklyn. www.nataliaduong.com
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