Shelly Hawkins
CHILD OF EARTH AND SUN
I’m working with an architectural principle Wright made popular and became famous for, called compression and release. He would guide a person through small or tight spaces that opened up into big open spaces creating a feeling of release. He also used low ceilings as a way to make a room and everything in it accessible and relatable to the human body but provided release by creating wide, stretching floor plans with open sightlines. In this way, he was establishing a relationship between the human body and the horizon that I think is so beautiful, especially at Taliesin West, and has become a point of inspiration for me.
Shelly Hawkins founded Hawkinsdance in 2017 as a way to bring contemporary dance to the forefront of the art scene in Tucson, and to provide a platform for her fellow artists. She has choreographed for both the proscenium stage, film, and non-traditional spaces including the Phoenix Art Museum and the Tucson Museum of Art (TMA). She believes contemporary dance is an intrinsically compelling expression of contemporary art that belongs alongside and in communion with other forms of visual art, to be experienced, enjoyed, and critiqued in much the same manner. For more information about Hawkinsdance, visit www.hawkinsdance.org.
Costume Design by Ivy Wahome
