TRISHA STIGGE
CHOREOGRAPHER | EDUCATOR | PERFORMING ARTIST

“The body is a vehicle for non-verbal communication, what can you not say out loud that your body can convey?" I often share this sentiment with students struggling to find a starting point in their composition, guiding them to introspection and observation. Ironically, I say this to myself just as frequently as I tell it to students.  When taking Composition and Choreography during my undergraduate tenure, I found myself regularly denying my instincts in order to fit into the movement lexicon of those around me. It wasn't until I began studying Dark Comedy that I realized what was missing in my creative process: genuine curiosity. I took my new favorite genre to the library, wrote stories and journaled in this genre, and out of nowhere it hit me.  Comedy's presence in my life has always been a natural theraputic release, verbal and non-verbal. As a recovering 'people pleaser,' I found solace in this familiar discovery, adapting my embodied practice to explore humor as a remedial tool in my work. 

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I decided that I needed to laugh, be it in conversation or strangely to myself in the corner, before each class or rehearsal and when creating choreography, I began by improvising a physical conversation between myself and an object in the room (or something I had passed on the way there). My 'duet' with a window squeegee, on the day my grandfather passed away, has been one of the most unlikely moments of comfort I have experienced. Nonetheless, I was not alone and my new-found-friend wiped away my tears with its rubber blade, metaphorically of course. Immediately, my tendency to compare my work with others', second guessing myself, doubting the part of my identity that is being an artist went mute inside my mind.

 

Without humor, my relationship with the dancers I teach would feel distant and inauthentic. They see a person who has been through painful experiences, but came out of them by utilizing artistic expression, introspection, humor and community. The room in which we work becomes a playground for our minds. We create and learn under a "nothing is stupid" protocol in order to encourage our imaginations' unencumbered freedom and curiosity.

 

In utilizing humor to create my work, coming out to my family and friends, receiving unsettling diagnoses, and losing loved ones became manageable as I was able to process my trauma, not bury it. As my career and education continue, I work towards integrating humor and movement without a narrative, but rather exploring abstract concepts. Having worked in Musical Theatre for more than two decades, I default to creating narrative works quite frequently, regardless of movement genre. But what does a piece exploring the 'bisexual-feminist paradox' look like through the lens of comedic release? One could research an individual's experience or a historical account but how can the piece be identified as 'conceptual' when only referencing a single person's story. Utilizing standard debate practices by encountering and studying every possible angle of the concept, developing movement with a throughline perspective can be achieved without relying on a narrative. As a professor once told me, "your audience is not as dumb as you might think, give them a hook, and they will come with you. "

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I make a point to speak with students about intersectionality and identity, when discussing dance history and somatics. Leading writing exercises, inspired by Nyama McCarthy-Brown's book 'Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World', where they recount every facet of their identity. We then discuss how each of us has far more perspective than we may have thought. They will then choose one aspect of themselves and improvise movement to their own thoughts on that single factor. Whether they are a daughter,an ex-catholic, latinx, adopted, a government assistance recipient, living with scoliosis, transgender, a friend, a veteran's son, an immigrant, Ojibwe, or any other possible identifying factor, we work to see how that specific experience can be communicated without words. 

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The majority of my intellectual interests derive from my own intersectionality. I often look at queer and non-binary literature and its discourse throughout the years, as it relates to feminism. Studying artists of a similar background, such as the queer German performer, Marlene Dietrich, I build a lexicon of nouns, verbs and adjectives from her quotes and writings, to be used as prompts for my improvisation. Similarly, while reading about ancient Norse-Germanic heathen practices and legends, such as those in 'The Poetic Edda', I identify words and phrases that resonate with me as a pagan practitioner of Norse-Germanic descent.

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As I create artistic works and curriculum, I continually refer back to the small pieces that make up the whole of each individual, how they experience those pieces , and how an artist will convey them to their audience.