Laura Neuman is a poet who sometimes collaborates with dancers. She/xe has performed and co-created work with The Workshop for Potential Movement (www.potentiallymoving.org). Some of her poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Tinge and OmniVerse. She has an M.A. in Poetry from Temple and an M.F.A. in Writing from Bard College Milton Avery School of the Arts. She has taught creative writing and composition as an adjunct at Temple. Laura has recently become a resident of Seattle, Washington.

This Horse is not a Home is currently an exploration in movement, sound, and performance by devynn emory. emory holds close personal relationships with all 3 performers in this work, and began a research thread of finding out what happens when a body intercepts another body’s space and identity. A mutable space exists that is hard to name. A place where we consistently let go of ourselves and try on the shell of another for a day, parade around in someone else’s flesh for a moment. We can physically manifest this in entangling with another body in sex, in giving birth, in pageantry and costuming of a self. What about when we work at interfacing with another person’s body experience in more subtle ways? The moments that we deteriorate to accept the envelope of someone else, or disperse ourselves in moments of exchange? We transgress our own identities and perceptions, colliding in moments of exchange and relationship, arriving at or ignoring the state of fluidity and mutation. Moments of comfort or tension fall and rise. In developing a trust of projecting our bodies, offering tests and witnessing one another’s experience, we find a space in this work to carry each other.

Choreography and Direction by: devynn emory

Performance by: Margot Bassett, devynn emory, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Megan Milam

Live music by: Margot Bassett and devynn emory (inspired by Antony and the Johnsons covering Moondog)

Recorded music by: Wim Mertens, David Kenton and Stephen Christensen

Costumes by: devynn emory

Set design: devynn emory

Hair Design by: Hayden Dunham

devynn emory is a choreographer and dancer from Philadelphia, and has been in New York for two and a half years. emory strives to make space for gender variantbodies on stage, and makes work with their company devynnemory/ beastproductions that supports this idea. Since being here the company has had a Space Grant residency at BAX, a Fresh Tracks residency at DTW, and has shown work at Draftworks, DNA, BAX, AUNTS, Roof Top Series, Danspace Project, Dixon Place and Movement Research. As a dancer emory has worked with Faye Driscoll, Daria Fain, Jen Rosenblit, Vanessa Anspaugh, Jules Skloot and Yve Laris Cohen and Katy Pyle. emory is a company member of Headlong Dance Theater and has been touring their piece “More”, which was created in collaboration with the dancers. “More” was created after a 2-year creative dialog with Tere O’Connor. emory has worked previously with Jerome Bel, White Oak Dance Project, Rennie Harris Pure Movment, and Paule Turner. emory was a New Edge Mix recipient, three-year resident choreographer of the Susan Hess Choreographers Project, and a recipient of the Independence Fellowship Foundation in Philadelphia. devynn emory/beast productions has been produced by the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia Dance Boom’s Motion Pictures, Arts and Ideas Festival in New Haven, and The London International Film Festival at the Place.

Margot Bassett is a singer/performer originally from Minneapolis, MN. Margot is so pleased to have worked with devynn emory/beast productions for the past year & a half, including performances at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Mascher Space, Bodega, & upcoming at NYLA. She has also recently worked with Abigail Levine (Center for Performance Research), Calliope Theatre Company (The Flea Theater), Deborah Black (The Tank, Judson Church), Daria Faïn (Danspace Project, DTW, Governor’s Island, & The Lab @ Roger Smith), Meredith Monk (BAM), Marisa Michelson (Signature Theatre DC), Vincent Luce DeGeorge (Theater for the New City), and Eliza Ladd (Berkshire Fringe) in addition to making her own work. Margot has an MFA in Contemporary Performance from Naropa University.

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, a 2011 Fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a certificate candidate at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University, is a poet, choreographer, and performance artist. He is the Co-Director of anonymous bodies, a site based performance company based in Philadelphia. His work in theater and dance has received support from The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance, The Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and The Philadelphia Cultural Fund. His new solo performance work entitled other.explicit.body. will be presented in April 2012 as a part of the E-moves showcase at the prestigious Harlem Stage in NYC. As a performer, Kosoko has created original roles in work of Kate Watson-Wallace/anonymous bodies, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, Headlong Dance Theater, and The Philadiction Movement. Kosoko’s poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poems Against War, The Dunes Review, and Silo, among other publications. In 2011, Kosoko published Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). He is a contributing writer for Dance Journal and the Broad Street Review in Philadelphia. Visit: www.philadiction.org for more information.

Meghan Milam is a dance artist currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She dances most recently for artists Anna Azrieli and devynn emory/beast productions. In past, she has shown up in the work of Vanessa Anspaugh, Yve Laris Cohen, Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero, Casey Llewellyn, Katy Pyle, and Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts, as well as occasionally and rarely showing her own work. Additionally, she collaborates on video projects with Christy Pessagno. She is excited to continue work with devynn on this project.