DeAnna's mission as a dance-artist is to celebrate the brilliance of the physical body and to realize the potential of dance as a vehicle for social change. To dance is to connect mind and body and utilize this relationship to move through time and space. Performers and audience are united inside a fleeting moment of time, cultivating absolute presence. Dancing is listening and speaking with the entire body, allowing people to connect with clear intention. Mind-Body connection, thoughtful presence, attentive listening and clear intention create the opportunity for perfect communication, making Dance the threshold for profound understanding, and therefore a powerful medium for social change.
DeAnna carries out her mission by creating, performing and teaching dance and movement locally, nationally and internationally.
As a choreographer and performer DeAnna strives to make dance, in the form of high-art, accessible to the masses. She engages audiences of all kinds by presenting quality dance performances not only in theaters but also in non-traditional, unexpected venues such as museums, churches, living rooms, nightclubs, and site-specific, public spaces.
As a dance educator DeAnna aspires to reintroduce people to their innate ability to connect mind and body. She achieves this by teaching dance to adults, teenagers and children, both arts-identified and non-arts-identified.
As a Healthy Lifestyle and Fitness Coach DeAnna helps individuals find the true strength and potential of their own body.
the world dancing...
Creatures on our planet who live in order and at peace with one another, communicate through their bodies. If you spend time observing animals in their natural habitat you will realize that their mode of communication entails LISTENING, listening with the whole body. This is how a flock of birds takes off from a rooftop at exactly the same time, or how a herd of horses gallops away from a predator all at the same moment. They sense each other. They LISTEN to one another, completely and intently--not just through sight and sound but through their very skin, with every cell of their beings. Imagine a world in which everyone listened to each other with this kind of awareness and attention. Dancers do not have to imagine. Every time they take or teach class, enter a rehearsal studio, or perform onstage they inhabit this world. In order to move in harmony, lift one another, shift through space quickly and with ease without crashing, dancers live implicitly in the present moment, constantly listening and communicating with their whole beings, without speaking a word. Dance audiences also witness, hold and participate in this communication. If everyone took the time to listen and communicate with this kind of sensitivity and thoughtfulness, what a different world it would be.
