July 6th | 2-3pm | Arts Mission Oak Cliff
Anna Bauer and collaborators (Jairus Carr and Celeste Camfield) are town for a residency at AMOC! Join them for an informal showing at the end of their residency!
About Anna Bauer's Residency
To me, dance-making is like solving a puzzle. I gather individual elements- the dancers, the movement, the sound, the concept- and find the ways they connect and make sense to me. I figure out how those pieces form a bigger picture. As I’ve grown as an artist and grown older as a person, this act of connecting seeming randomness and making it into something personally meaningful has started to feel more and more reflective of living in general. I consider dance as my way of finding/making meaning in my life. It makes me feel significant, this puzzle-solving. It gives me an identity. It puts me in community with the people around me, through classes and performances and rehearsal processes. I too am a puzzle piece, finding my place in this big universal picture.
My choreographic works are collages, connecting and weaving together things that I find interesting during the time of their creation, as well as ideas that arise between myself and my dancers during the process itself. I toe the line of specificity and abstraction. I want to make work that has recognizable mundane elements and is clearly about something, but I encourage an audience to form their own interpretations and have the final say on what that something is. For this reason, I draw inspiration heavily from everyday life- coffee, laundry, dinner, pants, and so on. My movement generation often stems from pedestrian gesture: sudden claps of the hands, subtle nods of the head, reluctant shrugs of the shoulders. My dancers move to the sound of dripping coffee, put clothing on hangers, and form human tables with their bodies. Often, deeper connections arise behind seemingly commonplace things that reflect my personal experiences and the experiences of my dancers: Breakfast food transforms into a study of intimacy between strangers. The dinner table becomes a manifestation of internal conflict. Laundry investigates themes of perception. Art imitates life, life imitates art, and round and round we go.
Jairus Carr and Celeste Camfield are two fantastic fellow Austin artists- we've worked together closely over the past few years, and we want to continue collaborating. This residency, so graciously hosted by Agora Artists, is the beginning of something new for us. We are excited to use this time to investigate movement improvisationally and choreographically and share a little bit of our creative process and a little bit of Austin with the Dallas dance community!
About the Artists
Anna is a person living in Austin, Texas, and wearing the hats of choreographer and dancer. She holds a BFA in Dance from Sam Houston State University and currently dances for the KDH Dance Company and Allysen Hooks Projects while maintaining a personal focus on choreography. She often collaborates with fellow artist Jairus Carr. Right now, her work investigates things like details, clothing, and puzzles. Events across Texas have been kind enough to include her pieces in their lineup: ARCOS Presents Short Form, Austin Dance Festival, BLiPSWiTCH’s Offbeat X, Barnstorm Dance Fest, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, and local concerts produced by Austin artists such as ZATERO Dance, Emily Rushing, Carissa Topham Fisher, and Jahna Bobolia. She has also brought her work to national festivals, most recently White Wave Soloduo Dance Festival and RAD Fest Midwest Dance Festival. She has attended residencies with Keshet Makers Space Experience, WhirlWind Dance Company, Homeport Art House, and Bellingham Repertory Dance. Anna also does other non-dance-related things, but you can ask her about those in person.
Instagram: @anna_bauer151 | Website: annabauerdance.com
Dancer/choreographer Jairus Carr has been in and made work in Austin since 2018. He has worked with several Austin-based artists, like BLiPSWiTCH, Early Era Collective, Jennifer Sherburn, and KDH Dance Company. Frequently collaborating with Anna Bauer, he showcases work across the US—events like Barnstorm Dance Festival, RAD Fest, and Austin Dance Festival. Looking to the future, he’s perpetually unsure.
Instagram: @jairuscarr | Website: jairuscarr.carrd.co
Celeste Camfield is an artist living on the settled land of the Nʉmʉnʉʉ Sookobitʉ (Comanche), Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos peoples, currently known as Austin, TX. She grew up dancing in the Texas Hill Country and studied at Marymount Manhattan College, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s P.A.R.T.S summer school in Brussels, and ImPulsTanz in Vienna. Since moving to Austin in 2019, Celeste has danced with ARCOS, BLiPSWiTCH, Anna Bauer, Alexa Capareda, and Jairus Carr, among others. She has been creating experimental dance films since 2019, with screenings in Austin, Camden, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, and Portland. In 2022, Celeste co-founded Preheat Fest, a screendance film festival in Austin.
Instagram: @egg.t.h.o.t
Tickets: Free