VESTIBULE
In a time marked by climate crisis and widespread disconnection between body, mind, and environment, VESTIBULE explores feminist futurities and how dance can function as a practice of regeneration. The choreography unfolds through the processes of Rooting, Flowing, and Beaming, proposing a new way of beginning and becoming anew together. What is possible when women unite to dismantle inherited separations between personal and collective ecosystems? What happens when choreography understands the body not as separate from the environment, but as an exultation and extension of it? By combining the knowledge of the body with that of the Earth, Myers’ work inhabits the “vestibule” as a threshold space between inner and outer worlds, somatic practice and ecology, and individual presence and collective becoming.
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ROOTING grounds, shapes, and orientates. Drawing from the stability of plants anchoring to the earth, this section serves as a foundation, highlighting the need for security and stability in a growing ecosystem. Dancers physically investigate rooting by finding a place in the space where they can successfully grow into standing. The process of getting there requires many instances of uprooting and rerooting until the group establishes a shared balance of space. In other words, each of us learns our place in this growing ecosystem.
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Flowing circulates, disrupts, and expands. Inspired by water systems, emotional processing, and creative ideation, this section offers circulations of change that sustain an ecosystem. This section highlights fluctuations of energy. We use the canvases as propulsive material to change and build an environment of fluidity, vigor, and communal attentiveness. The energy increases, we see each other, and we work hard to develop and evolve our ecosystem.
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Beaming is radiance. This is the sunlight that nourishes the entire ecosystem, embodying the energetic expressions of confidence, light, joy, and generosity. This section is where we experience our collective light force by connecting with verticality and the possibility of becoming a celestial body. Somatic practices focus on cultivating heightened sensitivity and understanding of one's bodily systems, the body-mind kinship, and I work to show this through presence in the body, mind, and spirit. Beaming is vitality.
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The three together form a trinity of modes of being that sustain homeostasis and life. Flowing without rooting leads to chaos, rooting without flow results in stagnation, and beaming without flow becomes shallow.
What is it? What is the Goal?
VESTIBULE is an evening-length contemporary dance performance that utilizes ecosomatic choreographic frameworks; it is an approach to choreography that understands the body not as separate from the environment, but as a practice that combines the knowledge of the body with an ecological understanding of the world. I am creating this work in collaboration with UCLA dancers Sakura Amano, Erin Co, Mikayla Knestrick, and Ellington Persley, and in partnership with composer Grace Miedziak, designer Alina Beaman, painter Timothy Hunter, and technical director Arsenio Apillanes. Together, my collaborators and I form a multi-sensory environment where dance, sound, art, light, and material come together to create an ecosystem that ruptures and regenerates. VESTIBULE offers a dance pedagogy that fosters ecological consciousness, somatic strengthening, and ecosystem regeneration. It is not a performance about idealizing nature, but rather it is a dance working to form kinship with it through the portal of a blank canvas. The work is a demonstration of a process of reframing how to root, flow, and beam in the natural and created systems we inhabit. Ultimately, my goal is for this work to contribute to an ongoing conversation about sustainability in performance and dance-training pedagogy that is ecological, somatic, and communal.
Project Collaborators
Choreographer, Director, and Producer: Kate Myers Dancers/Collaborators: Sakura Amano, Erin Co, Mikayla Knestrick, and Ellington Persley Music Composition: Grace Miedziak, with introduction by M3g and edits by Kate Myers Lighting: Arsenio Apillanes Costumes: Alina Beaman Paintings: Tim Hunter Dramaturgy: Susan Foster, Miguel Gutierrez, Will Rawls, and Victoria Marks Photography: Taniya Cooksey Set Design: Kate Myers
Presentations
VESTIBULE premieres at UCLA Glorya Kaufman Theater April 3rd-4th, 2026, as a part of the MFA Upstart Series
Funding + Support
UCLA World Arts and Cultures/Dance
Joan Myers Donation