Collaboration with choreographer, Amy Miller, and GroundWorks DanceTheater. Dancers: Felise Bagley, Kelly Brunk, Damien Highfield, Amy Miller and Sarah Perrett.
Valence (vey-luhns) began as an exploration of how dance could become music and music could become dance. Using the idea of breath, with its inherent sounds and movements as a starting place, Miller and Swendsen collaborated to create a work that aims to explore the intersections of the two art forms, while still allowing each to retain its own voice and trajectories. Valence, a chemistry term used to describe the relative combining capacity of an atom, is used here to illustrate ‘the capacity of one person or thing to react with or affect another in some special way, as by attraction or the facilitation of a function or activity.’