As a part of the voudou rite of zombification, a bokor (also called a caplata, of the "left-handed" Vodun) takes possession of her/his victim's soul, replacing it with a loa (refers to a spirit, but directly translates to "mystery" in the Yoruba language) that she/he controls. The trapped soul is placed within a small jar, wrapped in a piece of the victim's clothing or jewelry, and hidden away.

In this instance, our bokor proves to not be fully capable of controlling the loa she has invoked with her veve's and chanting, and the zombie turns on its maker....

Noh is a classical Japanese performance form which combines elements of dance, drama, music and poetry into one highly aesthetic stage art. Indeed, it is the oldest surviving form of Japanese theater. These plays are very austere performances, in which wooden masks play an important role. The tone of the performances is grave, in keeping with the tragic character of the represented situations. A central principle of the Noh drama is "yügen" ("mystery", "depth", "darkness", "beauty", "elegance"), the intimation of a concealed truth, what Zeami Motokiyo defines as "the art of the flower of mystery". It is telling that Noh plays often involve ghosts or ghostly characters and emphasize, through symbolism and stylized gestures, the formal, abstract, and spiritual aspects of human action and emotion and their consequences. It is not uncommon for one character to play multiple roles.

In this instance, a dancer plays the roles of a samurai, his young wife, and a treacherous old man. The young couple court and marry, and live in bliss, until the libelous old man character comes to whisper untrue rumors of his wife's faithlessness into the samurai's ear. The samurai, brokenhearted at this dishonor to their marraige, still loves his wife enough to allow her to commit jigai. (Both the practices of jigai - the ritual suicide of women by the cutting of the jugular vein with a short sword or dagger - and seppuku - the ritual stomach-cutting suicide practiced by Japanese men - were committed to preserve one's honor, even after death. Those who did not belong to the samurai caste were never ordered or expected to commit seppuku and samurai women could only commit the act with permission.) The samurai's wife is trapped in a sort of limbo, reliving her recollection of the events that led to her untimely and unjust death over and over....

In this dance piece, 5 dancers represented all forms of pestilence personified in psuedo-animal form. Two rat-like creatures embodied rodent earthbound pestilence, two reptilian characters embodied a pestilence that harked to swamps and watery locales, and one bat-like creature on stilts represented an airborne pestilence. The rat-like creatures focused on mimicking rodent mannerisms, stayed low to the ground, and adopted a very hunched over posture. The reptilian creatures moved with hard edges and calculation, rapid neck movements much like lizards, and a tall, lean but angular form. The bat-like creature largely utilized his wings and upper body work to affect a looming overhead, swooping down presence.

In this dance piece, an "a cappella" song was chosen, primarily for its evocative loneliness and emptiness. The Pandora character was given a respite from witnessing all the evils that she had released upon the world, and was experiencing grief at what horrible consequences her curiosity had resulted in. The dancer portraying grief used athletic and stylized dance movements in a dark veil and tattered burial dress to perform a duet with Pandora to personify the concepts of loss, hopelessness, desolation, and resignation.

This dance piece was inspired by my early-age reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. Being the sort of child who always cheered for the villains and was disappointed when they lost, Jadis, the White Witch might've been my first hero as a child. In this piece, a dancer is embedded in a symbolic snow bank of fabric from the waist down. As the music itself changes from lyrical and smooth to percussive and sharp, the Ice Witch herself responsively changes her movement style with the music. She herself is not so much of an individual person anymore, her face is perpetually in a wide-eyed wonder, as she has become one with the concepts of winter, rolling snowdrifts, jagged ice, and a lack of emotional or physical warmth.

A girl rapidly approaching her teen years is given a mysterious gift -- a doll. Deeming the doll an unworthy and childish gift, the girl largely ignores the doll. But love can come in bizarre forms, and as they say, love cannot be denied....

This piece explores the concept of how unrequited love can become destructive, using a dancer whose movement was largely sexy and coming-of-age, and a contortionist who mimicked her with earnesty but doll-like inadequacy.

In German folklore there is a breed of Fae who are barely distinguishable from humans. No wings, no pointed ears, no dresses made of flower petals. The Nixies were lake and river-dwelling faeries. They were particularly associated with the Saal River, and could be recognized by their large, dreadful eyes and by the hems of their skirts that were always dripping wet. As the changeling mythos goes, they had an inclination for kidnapping human children, but what did they do with these human children? Why did they kidnap them?

This piece involved dancers who were soaking wet, fingertip prosthetics, and green-hued body makeup.

This piece explored the dynamics of a tango-influenced, torch-singer style dance between a sadist and a masochist. The masochist's desire for her own suffering, the sadist's desire to inflict that suffering, and the resultant dance that is born of it.

The pitfall of pious, unquestioning faith and devotion is that one can be blindsided by unexpected, even previously trusted sources. This piece explores the ever-present power struggles between even the most benign-seeming institutions, and how humanity is inherently flawed, even when we aspire to the most sacred callings.

The cuckoo bird is widely known in nature to be a brood parasite, laying its single egg in the next of another, typically smaller but somewhat similar in appearance, breed of bird. The unfortunate young of the nest parents often starve, because they are ill-equipped to compete with the nest intruder, and many times are even physically ousted from the nest by the intruder to fall to their deaths. What is not widely known is that this brood parasitic behavior can also happen in the insect world.

When nature's laws become twisted and blurred, producing a creature that is not-quite bird and not-quite insect, to what extent might a cuckoo's deception go?

This piece explores the life cycle of this twisted cuckoo creature, and culminates in the nestling allowing the parents to nurture and care for it, even affecting love towards the parents, but eventually turning on both its parents as soon as it becomes strong enough to do so.

The term "HREX" is the scientific acronym for "human radiation experiment". Human experimentation has been practiced for centuries. There are cases of vivisection (live dissection) of gladiators and slaves that date back from the Roman era. Throughout history, the population of those used for medical experimentation have always been the outcast: the orphans, prisoners, mentally retarded, veterans, wounded soldiers, and asylum residents.

When former President Clinton ordered the declassification of the government-sponsored human radiation experiments, publishing them on the internet in 1996, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was forced to disclose notes from 425 experiments conducted by the DOE and the Atomic Energy Commission from the 1940's to the 1970's. The majority of these experiments documented no informed consent from the subjects.

T.S. Chapman of Manhattan District Experiments at the University of California during the 1940's said on record that it was commonplace to use patients in plutonium, uranium, polonium, lead, or radium injection and ingestion experiments without their knowledge and without asking them to sign release or consent waivers. It was protocol to schedule false-pretense surgeries to obtain samples of bone tissue, spleen tissue, liver tissue, and extraction of whole teeth to measure retained radioactive concentrations.

If you wish to regard HREX's as things of the past to help you sleep better at night, know this: a doctor at Yale University in February 2005 said that "Children in orphanages, children in homes of the mentally retarded, these are all good populations from the sense of medical research, because you have an easily accessible group of people living in controlled circumstances, and you can monitor them....It would even be an advantage in applying for grant money, because you don't have to go to the problem of recruiting subjects."

Sometimes you don't have to seek out fantastic tales of gruesome monsters for a good scare. You need only look to your left or right.

This piece purposely places the dancers in some extremly taxing physical positions, and forces them to work with some senses partially hindered, to really give a sense of fear and helplessness. They start the piece in hampered breathing conditions, they peel out of hosiptal gowns, their vision is obscured with wet chiffon, their bodies are covered in a sticky paste like substance, and they have pre-wet gauze and plastic insects in their mouths.

The story of the first man and first woman is one that is easily one of the most familiar stories of the Judeo-Christian faith. There is the woman, the Serpent, and the fruit of the forbidden tree. The Serpent is most often depicted as the eloquent wordsmith, tricking Eve into disobeying God, or convincing her to disobey God. This piece explores the concept that perhaps the Serpent never had to say one word to stoke the already-present fires of Eve's temptation. Was Eve a hapless victim or a woman who knew exactly what she wanted?

In the Bible, Delilah is painted as a treacherous woman, who continually seeks ways to sap Samson of his strength. Samson toys with her, lying several times about the secret to his strength and each time Delilah tests it, he tolerates her failed attempt with bemusement. Here we meet a Delilah who intrigues Samson precisely because he may have just met his arrogant, confident match.

Michal was a daughter of King Saul who was given to King David as a means of forging a political alliance between the two kings. She apparently truly loved David, at least at first, while David seems to have viewed her merely with passing infatuation, as a prize, and then later as just one of his multiple wives. In the end, her love for him grew cold as a result of his indifference, and although they remained married, their alienation was total; they lived the remainder of their lives apart.

In this piece, we see a tentative, heartbroken Michal be relegated to the harem among King David's other wives, and how she comes to terms with the other wives, eventually asserting her dominance.

(Wives choreographed by Sina.)

In the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, King David sent Joab, his battle commander, and all of Israel's soldiers to war against the sons of Ammon. But David stayed at Jerusalem.

One afternoon, it is written that King David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house, where he spied Bethsheba bathing and he found her very desirable.

Bethsheba's husband was Uriah, a loyal soldier of the king, but this was not to deter David, who decided to make her a widow so that he could take her as his own wife. Incredibly, David wrote a letter to Joab, and summoned Uriah to take it to Joab. The letter read: "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die." Joab obeyed, and Uriah was slain.

But was Bethsheba the innocent victim of a king's desire in this bloodshed, as the Bible tells us?

Lilith...the name calls to mind several images. Adam's reputed first wife, screech owls, a long-haired Judaic demonness, a significant character in the feminist movement, a nocturnal devourer of babies. Most research agrees that she is a female night demon found in Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian mythology. Persian incantation bowls have been found with exorcisms against Lilith scribed into them. There is a Jewish tradition of hanging four amulets, one on each wall, in the room of a newborn babe, with the inscription "Lilith - abi!" ("Lilith - begone!") on each amulet. There is a reference to her in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q184, fragment 1), and she is known as a lamia or "witch" in ancient Greek literature.

But even a demonness could have another, softer, side to her story. This piece focuses only on the King James version Bible association between Lilith and screech owls, shapeshifting from owl to woman, and we witness her private revels in her newfound womanly form.

This contact improv piece centers around the concepts of conformity and societal/ peer pressure. There is a catalyst dancer, a leader, who enmeshes the rest of the dancers as they mimic her, a horde of drone-like dancers, and two dancers who periodically try to "escape", expressing some small degree of individuality, only to be absorbed back into the horde. Whether it be that the dancers who yearn for individuality succumb to others applying force to reabsorb them, or that they actually want to be reabsorbed due to an unwillingness to stand out, or a fear of lost identity if one strays too far from the herd...it is obvious that there is a highly repressive hive mentality and social organizational structure in place.

A dance monologue that explores the inner landscapes of a drug addict...their coping with sobriety and spiraling back down into addiction, indeed, perhaps never truly escaping addiction but creating their own fantasies about escaping the addiction....

This piece features cybernetic organisms, dancers as bionic humanity where the lines are blurred. The mainstay rule that the animal kingdom lives by is: "survival of the fittest". Apply this survival instinct to artificial intelligence/ technology.....and we find the instinct to survive is present in every sentient being....

Orkney has many folk stories concerning the magical race of creatures called the selkies. Most depictions show them as gentle shape shifters with the ability to transform from seals into beautiful human women.

The common element in all these selkie-folk tales, and perhaps the most important element is the fact that

when selkies assume human form, they cast off their sealskins. Within these magical skins lay the power to return to seal form, and therefore return to the sea.

If one of the selkies lost their sealskin, they were doomed to remain in human form until the skin was recovered. Because of this, if disturbed during one of their midnight shore dances, the selkie-folk would hastily snatch up their skins and rush back to the safety of the sea.

This dance piece explores the concept of a selkie-like creature who is not the gentle, doe-like creature depicted in the folk tales of Orkney, although the lonely fisherman who finds her deceives himself into thinking that she is....

A heavily cerebral, modern dance influenced piece combining elements of Roman mythology, prophecy, fate, geometry, time, superposition, the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle of a collection of probabilities, and quantum indeterminacy: the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system.....

This dance vignette deals with childhood fear...nothing seemed more down-to-your-bones terrifying as a small child like your nightmares did. Enough so that they had the power of sending you running through the darkened house in the middle of the night to your parents' room to beg to sleep in their bed...Here we witness the autobiographical childhood nightmare of the choreographer...

In Irish lore, the term "daoine maite" refers to the race of fairies, directly translating from Gaelic as the "good people".

They were very human like in their appearance, and of all the sidhe, the Irish fairy was generally not diminutive, often being described as tall, handsome, richly dressed beings who had an opalescence or shine about them.

It is easy to see how their significant beauty, coupled with their supernatural powers and marked intelligence, could make them a haughty, arrogant race. A race prejudiced against human society.

This is a story of forbidden love, Between mortal and faery realms. A love that defies convention and custom, as one of the sidhe crosses the veil between worlds, called by the music of a human drummer and chooses to stay Beyond.

The Japanese euphemism "jugun ianfu" (military comfort women), refers to women of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who became sexual slaves for the Japanese troops before and during the Pacific War.

Some were minors sold into this slavery. Others were deceptively recruited by middlemen, told that they were being hired as factory workers and kept captive. Still more were forcibly abducted, from both Japan and the countries that Japan invaded and conquered as part of their wartime efforts, and shipped to the "comfort stations".

The Japanese government's rationale for needing sexual slaves for its troops can be traced back to 1932. It begins with documentation of Japanese Lieutenant-General Okamura Yasuji's proposal for a "shipment" of Comfort Women to be sent to Shanghai, China as a solution for 223 reported rapes by his troops. However, the proliferation of state-mandated sexual slavery began with the Nanjin Massacre in 1937. After the merciless slaughter of thousands of Chinese, and the pillaging and arson that followed, they set upon raping an insurmountable number of women. As a result of the Nanjin Massacre, "comfort houses" were set up at a fast rate in order to 'settle down' disorderly Japanese troops.

The Japanese Army used comfort stations extensively until the war ended in the Pacific in 1945. Most Comfort Women died without being returned to their homelands. They were simply discarded when they got too sick to be of any use. Overwhelming despair drove the imprisoned women to suicide and suicide attempts with alarming frequency. During the last months of WWII, most Comfort Women were murdered or left to die by retreating Japanese troops. Even the survivors were "ruined" women, as no man would willingly take a former Comfort Woman as his bride. The Japanese government denied that women had been forced to work at comfort stations and maintained that it was never involved in operating comfort stations until, in 1992, Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Chuo University found wartime documents in the Library of the National Institute for Defense Studies that confirmed that the Japanese Forces had operated comfort stations. On the same day that excerpts from the documents were published in Japanese newspapers, the government finally admitted its involvement, although it has never issued an apology or compensation to the women.

This piece, a vignette in Unmata's yearly Blood Moon Regale show, was a collaboration choreography between April Rose and Sina.  The show was zoo-themed, in order to bring awareness to the dilemma of caged wild animals.

The piece opens with the lemurs in their peaceful repose, basking in the afternoon sun and foraging for food.  Shortly thereafter, a group of zoo-going kids, bored by the animals "not doing anything" begin to shout and throw wadded up paper and popcorn at the lemurs, prompting the terrified lemurs to "perform".

.....a piece exploring the various emotions wrapped around the idea of how utterly confining labels can be.....

(featuring an 8'x8' cube and about 120' steel chain)