Hannah Westbrook on Entangled in the Tall Grass Premiering Week Two of West Wave Festival 31

Hannah Westbrook performs Entangled in the Tall Grass, a solo dance project tracing the artifacts of loss between personal and collective grief across a changing life and landscape. In a shared evening with Barb Lankamp, Westbrook moves in collaboration with texts and objects, exploring the loss of agency, nostalgia, joy, and emotional entrapment associated with living, grieving, and growing. Through a series of state based movement scores, she navigates her own experiences while simultaneously tending to the wild pools of bereavement on a poetic embodied journey back to herself and a reflection into the depths of recomposition. Westbrook is a queer dance artist, maker, educator, and arts administrator who creates work for stage, site, and screen. Her practice is based in devised dance-theater, improvisational movement scores, and site-specific somatic explorations. 

Hannah Westbrook sits on a black stage with purple light saturating the white walls behind her. She holds the cord of a free hanging lightbulb with one hand, hovering the warm light above the palm of her other hand. She is looking at the light bulb, it makes her light skin glow, her curly brown hair frames her face. Photo Credit: Sean Anomie

Chloe Cetinkaya: How are you making a connection between personal and collective grief in this work?

Hannah Westbrook: I like to work with abstraction and I think that abstraction inherently allows every audience member to have a different response. The work could be personal to me in one way while being personal to other people for a different reason. I think that meaning can move between broad and specific in a really fluid way when the choreography is abstract. I never want to force the narrative down someone's throat. I always want to give my audience many entry points into what I'm doing. 

CC: You wrote, "In this work, the artist moves in collaboration with text and objects...". I'm going to start with that fragment. What objects and texts are you collaborating with and what was your process?

HW: I've been using various pieces of furniture as a way to create a set and a site for myself. The first version of this work was largely set on a stool. The stool still feels really important to this piece and I'm also interested in a free hanging light bulb that can be interacted with. Mirrors are another element that I've been pulling in. I've been working with both small mirrors and large mirrors that I can put on the floor to have as a dancing surface and use to direct images back towards myself. The current version of this work is going to have three separate pools, or three different environments, that come out of those different types of objects that I’m working with.

I’ve been collaborating with a poet on this project as well, Natalie Myers-Guzman, whose evocative words may or may not appear as a part of the show, but definitely are alive as strong influences.

CC: Why is the stool important?

HW: The height off of the floor and the way that I can play with balance in that world, feels really interesting. The small, super contained, one-by-one surface of the stool-top is a fascinating dance surface for me right now. The restriction feels like it offers so many possibilities, and then the height gives it this almost dangerous feel that is really intriguing.

CC: Is that similar to your interest in the free hanging light bulb? What attracts you to the idea that it’s moving?

HW: I feel like those are really separate ideas. The light bulb feels like a different segment of the piece from the stool. Being able to manipulate our environment is very interesting. Part of the source material that I'm working with is a feeling of being trapped. In playing with altering the space, can we alter whether we feel trapped or not?

CC: Finishing the statement that you wrote, "The artist moves in collaboration with texts and objects, exploring the loss of agency, nostalgia, joy and emotional entrapment associated with living, grieving and growing". I’m particularly interested in "exploring the loss of agency". What agency has been lost, and how are you exploring that in this work?

HW: I feel like this has a lot of answers. When I first started working on this piece over a year ago, it was related to a big life transition for me. I had been suppressing my own desires, wants and needs for a long time without realizing it, and then I had an opportunity to figure that out, and it expanded who I was in the world. That's where it started. But as I've continued working on this piece, what I'm interested in feels related to the stuckness that I'm feeling around the collective rage and grief over our political world right now. I'm speaking broadly, but I think a lot of people in the Bay Area feel like we've lost a lot of agency after the last election, and we’re experiencing this sort of tightness and panic. It wasn't something that I was thinking about when I applied for this residency, but as I've been working and these events have occurred, it feels very connected to my subject material. It’s definitely something I'm bringing into the studio, this sort of loss of agency when you feel like there's no room to dream and that there's just so much urgency to attend to, that we can't blossom in the ways that we want. I think that's one answer.

CC: In your project description and bio, you mention “state-based movement vocabulary”. What is state-based movement vocabulary and how is that part of your creative process?

HW: I love to work with improvisational scores. I come from a dance theater background, so the scores include the emotional tenor and intention of the moment in addition to a movement vocabulary, and are a device for me to drop myself into a state that I want to share with my audience. Bringing the full emotional, physical, and spiritual self into connection heightens the performance experience - even if just for me as the performer.

CC: How did you use that process to make this work?

HW: This piece will have three different pools in the space. It's going to have a triptych setup and each site will share a different element of the material. Currently, my biggest challenge is, what's the transition between those sites and how do we go with that character on this journey? Each location feels like a different step along that journey. I’m tangentially using the stages of grieving as a roadmap. I know there are more than three, but the stages of grieving feel very applicable to the scores that I'm making. And the certain sections happening in a certain order can heighten that. The stool idea is very contained, and with that I’m processing this idea that we're dealing, we're balancing, we're managing, we're working within our limitations. And then there are more explosive elements that sort of take us between the stages and that have the rage and that have the non-acceptance, etc.

CC: There's stages in between the stages then? 

HW: There are! You don't just snap in from one thing to another, right?

CC: That leads me to my next question. What makes a somatic exploration site-specific? Or, to rephrase, how do you explore a site somatically? Will there be any elements of this in your performance at Safehouse?

HW: I'm going to start backwards. So yes, there's going to be elements of site-specific work in the Safehouse performance. Regardless of whether I’m making work for a blank stage or a kitchen or a field, the practice of site-specific creation is such a part of how I've learned to work and have worked over the years that it always comes with me. As I said, I'm working with objects, so those create a certain site. And, the way that I integrate site and somatic work is by exploring the way the body responds to different surfaces, different objects and different ways of feeling contained or expansive. This really translates into how I feel available to move and what feels natural in a space. 

I like to work with intuitive movement. For example, if I’m in an environment with harsh edges, that's going to inform the choreography differently than if I’m  in a space with really soft edges and curvature, you know? So, in this particular work, the fact that it was originally created in a very expansive room feels tangible. And even though Safehouse is pretty small, I'm bringing with me that expansive phrase work that could fill a performance hall, and trying to help it work its way into this smaller venue in ways that still generate that same feeling of ease. I always want to be responsive to the space that I'm in. And frankly, I get really tired of an empty stage and want to fill it with objects!

CC: I’m asking all of the West Wave Festival 31 artists the following questions because I'm curious about how artists are thinking about our relationship with the audience. Who do you hope will come see this work and why?

HW: I'm hoping that a few people who I don't know will end up seeing this work. I really like sharing my art with strangers. It’s gratifying, and I think they take something different away from it. When we deeply know an artist, it completely changes how we see what they're doing. I'm always curious about the less connected perspective. I think that's part of why I wanted to share a show, and I'm excited to share with Barbara! Because, we run in similar worlds, but we also have really different communities. We cross over in only a couple of dance spaces, and I'm excited that we'll cross-pollinate our audiences.

CC: What do you hope the audience will take with them from this work or bring to it?

HW: I always appreciate when people come with curiosity and an open mind to take away whatever they take away, instead of looking for exactly what I'm trying to say. I appreciate that Contemporary Dance is such a personal experience to watch. Everyone gets something different and I love that. This is funny but, Safehouse feels like a really safe place to fail. And, I think that audiences know that. I'm interested in an audience that isn't expecting perfection and that is ready for the messy.

CC: What experience do you hope the audience will have?

HW: I hope they will go on a little emotional journey with me, and I hope that they enjoy the dancing and feel touched in some way.

CC: Is there anything else that you would like the audience to know about this work?

HW: I’m very curious about what audience participation would look like in this work. I don't know if I'll be ready to work with that for the show in January, but it's been on my mind a lot. If the question had been, “what do you want the audience to give you feedback on?” I would say, how can they be more integrated into this? That's a curiosity that I have around the audience on this piece.

CC: I love that! Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. I can’t wait to see your work!

HW: Thank you!

West Wave Festival 31

Jan 9-19, 2025

PROGRAM C

Jan 18 @ 7pm & Jan 19 @ 6pm - Hannah Westbrook / Barb Lankamp

SAFEhouse Arts 145 Eddy St. San Francisco 94102

CONTACT: Joe Landini (415) 518-1517 or joe@SAFEhouseArts.org

TICKETS $25 (No One Turned Away) https://safehousearts.org/