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Photo by Jeff Huston

Who's Afraid of Deborah Hay?

A duet of solos by Deborah Hay performed by Shannon Stewart and Mary Margaret Moore

 

Visit the blog to see Press for our Seattle shows April 5th & 6th at Washington Hall.

 

PORTLAND, OR >> Tickets 

 

April 18 & 19, 2014

Performance at 8pm

$12/$15 Brown Paper Tickets

 

Conduit Dance

918 SW Yamhill, 4th Floor

Portland, OR 97205

 

There will be a free discussion/demonstration each night at 7pm that is free and open to the public.

 

Friday April 18th guests include Erin Boberg Doughton (PICA), Mike Barber (Ten Tiny Dances), and Linda Austin (Performance Works Northwest).

 

Saturday April 19th guests include Tahni Holt , Tracy Broyles, Meg McHutchison, and Linda Austin.

 

DOWNLOAD AND READ THE PERFORMANCE PRIMER

 

WAODH? is a duet of solos by Deborah Hay adapted and performed by Seattle dance artists Shannon Stewart and Mary Margaret Moore. For 14 years, American post-modern choreographer Hay created and taught solos to a group of selected dancers from around the world in a program called the Solo Performance Commissioning Project. Each soloist was tasked with practicing the performance of their solo daily for up to a year and adapting the work to make it their own before performing for a public audience. WAODH? brings together 2009 solo At Once with 2012 solo "Dynamic" (a northwest premier for both) to create a an evening of work framed by conversations and demonstrations exploring the enigmatic, subversive, and invaluable work of Deborah Hay.

 

Invited guests for each evening’s Discussion/Demonstration are Peggy Piacenza, Amelia Reeber, and Kris Wheeler. These three women have long-standing artistic practices in their own right, but have also intimately experienced Hay and her work. Peggy Piacenza and Amelia Reeber both performed in Deborah Hay's Mountain. Additionally, Reeber performed in Hay’s: Music, Beauty, and If I Sing To You and Kris Wheeler performed in The Well. Wheeler has a longstanding friendship with Hay and was influential both in bringing her to the Pacific Northwest and in the formation of the ideas that created the Solo Performance Commissioning Project. Presented with support from Velocity Dance Center, 10 Degrees, Washington Hall, Studio Current, and 106 individual donors.

 

Shannon Stewart is a contemporary performance artist and choreographer based in the Northwest. Shannon graduated with honors from the University of Washington with degrees in Urban Planning and Dance and completed certificate programs in the Netherlands for both Dance and Spatial Design & Planning. She has since trained, taught and performed nationally and internationally, most notably with tEEth, Dayna Hanson, zoe | juniper, and Alternativa (Kathleen Hermesdorf) and Deborah Hay. Shannon received a full scholarship to study with Crystal Pite and Pol Heyvaert as part of the New Aesthetics performance intensive in 2013. She has received numerous individual artist awards and residencies and recently completed a national tour of her latest evening-length work An Inner Place That Has No Place. Her primary collaborator is filmmaker Adam Sekuler and together they make, curate and screen dance films around the country under the program name RADAR. Shannon teaches contemporary technique, improvisation, is certified in Gyrokinesis®, and is a Teaching Artist with the Mark Morris Dance For Parkinson’s program. Shannon has years of experience in the music industry (as co-founder of the Vera Project and author of In Every Town: An All-Ages Music Manualfesto), is a lifelong activist, and works with the body as the primary vessel for change.

 

Mary Margaret Moore’s experience with the moving body comes through competitive collegiate volleyball, contemporary and modern dance, physical theater, and a host of improvisational and somatic movement practices. Moore began a study of dance and performance in France after completing a degree in Art History at Cornell University. Living in Seattle since 2010, she has worked with Shannon Stewart on several of her group works, and with other PNW artists such as Allie Hankins, Vanessa DeWolf, Adam Sekuler, Beth Graczyk, and Jeff Huston. Moore is self-producing a 2014 tour called Creativity-in-Toe, performing a solo-work of dance and object theater, String, for Head Start and ECEAP classrooms within King County— funded by 4Culture, New Mexico Arts, Hatchfund and private individuals. She spent this past fall in Helena, Montana working with Cohesion Dance Project as the Rehearsal Director, Guest Artist, and Teacher for a community dance production open to individuals of all physical abilities, and older than 7. Moore is studying the Feldenkrais Method with Dennis Leri and is a Teaching Artist with the Mark Morris Dance for Parkinson’s program. Moore performed her first adaptation of Deborah Hay's solo choreography, At Once, at the University of New Mexico in 2010.

© 2025 shannon stewart 

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