Philosophy

Debra Wanner creates work that transforms life's fluctuating circumstances into worlds with intuitive, conjured, and everyday movement.

“The dances are never about one thing and when I try to hold them still they escape my grip. This I understand as a given in dance, due to the ephemeral quality of life that movement owns.”

Influenced by her related adventures in experimental theater, writing, video, performance art, improvisation, collaboration, and the Feldenkrais Method®, she creates inquisitive, visceral, emotional, mischievous, and visually rich performances.

“I feel that all of us have very, interesting and idiosyncratic, lives and I want to honor that in a creative way.”

Debra is fascinated with the many ways we are conscious of ourselves. She believes art reflects a path and teaches us about our being from another vantage point.

“I am not intentionally creating a dance style.  I am interested in exploring states of minds or situations and the movement demands that each asks for.”

When working with other dancers, Debra instigates the movement ideas and vocabulary, then guides and shapes the work. The performers play an integral part in the exploration and creation of the material.

“At the least my dances are structures for the performers to reveal their essence and to satisfy my artistic whims and fancies. At their best the dances express some universal terrain about life that an audience can feel on a gut level.”

Debra’s history and that of her dancers and collaborators creates a dynamic of past influences with a modern interpretation. There is a built-in dialogue of aesthetics and perspectives that happens naturally.

"As I find them seamlessly connected, I am attracted to  technical and fantastical movement, as well as actions and language that comes from our everyday lives and the objects we live with.”

There is a structural formality to the work along with an emotional undertone that pushes against and through these constraints.

“The dances are crafted scaffoldings enabling multilayered, confessional, tribal, ritualistic, bonding and hopefully entertaining work that can speak again and again”.