ABOUT ME
With the belief that bodies are valuable sites of learning and understanding, I make and perform live dance-based works that expose absurdities and imagine alternate worlds. I make reality checks. I make hope gardens.
My work is rooted in post-modern, contemporary, and improvisational dance forms. It is iconographic, luscious, exhausting, detailed, serious, and humorous. In performance and choreographic work, I am interested in relationship, discomfort, victory, failure, and sincere pursuit.
Because its product is difficult to quantify, I see dance as a tool for re-imagining capitalist priorities. As a dance artist, I believe that I have a responsibility to create work that reveals and heals wounds and moves us toward a more livable world. I also love to dance and I love to make dances, and I believe that love is not something to be ignored.
My name is Tori and I am a dancer, choreographer, technician, activist, educator, and student. I am currently pursuing a B.F.A. in Dance and a minor in Sustainability Studies from the University of Minnesota. While in school, I have had the honor of dancing works by Andrea Miller, Leslie Parker, Eko Supriyanto, Annie Hanauer, Chris Schlichting, Pramila Vasudevan, and numerous student choreographers. I have presented original dance work at student Composition Showings as well as the eARThing Productions’ 2020 show, 2018 and 2019 University of Minnesota Arts Quarter Festivals, 2018 Dances at MuCCC, 2016, PAVE Dance Presents: A Dance Benefit For Esther’s Aid & American Parkinson’s Disease Association, and 2016 Vermont State Dance Festival.
In recent years, I have worked as a freelance dancer, rehearsal assistant, co-curator, research assistant, production manager, production assistant, social media assistant, food service worker, teaching assistant, marketing & communications manager, and farmhand. My work is rooted in social justice, endurance, curiosity, and exuberance, and I try to bring these values to performance, choreography, and all other avenues of my life.
