subject to change: a choreography for the hysterical body

Subject to Change: a choreography for the hysterical body is an immersive dance theater work exploring waiting as a physical and choreographic state. Developed from my first return to movement after receiving a pacemaker/ICD and being diagnosed with heart failure, the project examines how the body negotiates uncertainty, regulation, and survival within medicalized systems.

Through interruption, hesitation, restraint, and calibrated risk, the work manipulates time by moving both forward and backward through fragmented states of memory, diagnosis, and embodiment. Figures emerge and recede throughout the performance, creating choreographic loops of anticipation and surveillance. Revisiting archived movement studies, medical texts, rituals, and EKG readings from my illness, I explore how vulnerability and vigilance reshape agency, rhythm, and embodiment. The project also engages the gendered dynamics of medical authority, tracing how women’s pain and bodily knowledge are often dismissed or rendered “hysterical” within clinical spaces.

EKG readings from this period function as graphic scores for composer Glen Fittin, transforming cardiac rhythms into sound and creating a dialogue between choreography and the precarious rhythms of the body.