Hope Mohr Dance

Hope Mohr
Artist Statement

My primary tool in making dance is deconstruction. I break down movement to get at strangeness and to excavate a voice closer to the bone. I break down movement to push against the traditions of white formalism that have shaped me. I break down movement to create a space where freedom can arise. 

Poetry can unmake the self that culture has made.  Poetry can create space for a self that does not yet exist. When I speak of poetry, I speak of dance. Making a dance feels like doing a million close readings of the body.

I am an activist formalist. This means that I value thinking about subject matter through form. Also that doubt corrodes my forms. I make art to stir up ambivalence, to imagine values other than those of the dominant culture, and to fall into places that scare me. 

What performance offers is the chance to break through dead ways of being.

Only by harnessing our longing can we unshackle ourselves from forms that no longer nourish us. Making performance means creating conditions where we can sense new possibilities for how we show up for our lives.