Upcoming Events & Projects
I am curating and producing a new project called Control/Shift that explores the intersection of dance and technology. This will be a fun evening of works-in-progress highlighting student choreography, a piece set on UCD students choreographed by Meredith Joelle Charlson, and a new work “Upright Citizens” that I’m choreographing collaboratively with the student dancers. We’re performing at the Vanderhoef Studio at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis Nov 19-22, 2025. Tickets can be purchased here: https://www.mondaviarts.org/whats-on/control-shift/
Past Projects & Presentations
Virtual Conference Presentation
•You can find a recording of my conference paper “Spectacular Disasters” given virtually at the 2020 DTSA (Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association) conference “Net-Works: Mapping Labor in Theatre and Performance” here via HowlRound Theatre Commons. My paper starts at around 3:45.
Dramaturgical Work
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, adapted by Frank Galati, dir. Jeffrey Lo. Los Altos Stage Company, Los Altos, CA. April 2019. Read some of my reflections and program notes here.
• Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, dir. Brian Mertes. Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI. November 2016.
Photo Credit: Mark Turek
Production & Choreography:
Rules of Play
Davis, CA • May 2025
Curator, Producer + Choreographic Mentor for the Spring Dance Concert for the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis.
The “rules of play” outline how, and in what ways, people engage with the structures and systems around us. At their best, rules provide a clear framework that equalizes the playing field through transparency and enough structure such that all players have the potential to win. Rules can effectively create order and calm, such that it is clear to all players what to expect. Too often, though, is it unclear how the game is played. Unspoken rules, conventions, biases, and forms of gatekeeping prevent and obstruct success for so many people.
Rules of Play, the 2025 Spring Dance Concert at UC Davis, explored how, and in what ways, people navigate the game of life. Through dance and movement, collaborators creatively investigated the systems around them and present work that helps audiences reflect upon what rules are of benefit to society and which may need to be revised or upended.
Photo Credit: Bea Augustin (UC Regents)
Choreo-Ecologies
Davis, CA • November 2024
Choreo-Ecologies was an investigative process undertaken by undergraduate dancers at UC Davis aimed at exploring the myriad relationships between movement and nature. “Choreo-Ecologies” invites audiences to consider the ways in which our bodies are entangled within ecological systems and how attuning to the way the world moves around us can offer us new perspectives on our relationship to the planet and all its inhabitants.
In collaboration with scientists associated with the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, students have been engaging in choreographic research that is centered on the following questions: How can we attend to the choreographics of the world around us? How does/might our relationship to nature change when viewed through the lens of movement and dance? And, how can we use our bodies to visualize/embody/create/discover new modes of engagement with the natural world?
[RE]Vision
Davis, CA • May 2024
Curator, Producer + Choreographic Mentor for the Spring Dance Concert for the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis.
[RE]Vision is an invitation to dream. At this moment where ecological, political, and systemic structures are colliding with violent force, revisioning is needed and necessary. Revisioning conjures new worlds through reorientation to the spaces and relationships with which we move. Revising requires us to experiment, take risks, and confront the limits of what we have in front of our eyes. This evening of movement and performance asks audiences to remain active in the call to see, and to move towards, what can be made anew by reframing what exists around us.
Photo Credit: Bea Augustin (UC Regents)
Dry-5: Stories from the California Drought
San Francisco, CA • Aug 2015
Producer, Choreographer, and Assistant to the Director.
Dry-5: Stories from the California Drought is a multimedia storytelling project that transforms first hand accounts of people impacted by California’s drought into a performance piece, shown around the San Francisco Bay Area. By combining monologues with choreography, audio recordings and photography, Dry-5 tells the stories of the complicated effects of the drought and meaningfully engage audiences with the impact of climate change through art.
M2: Terminus to Terminus
Stanford, CA • Jan 2013
Photo credit: Stefanie Okuda
An original play devised by Mari Amend, Annie Dauber, and Doria Charlson inspired by our year abroad in Paris.
The Paris Metro provides a space in which people from all backgrounds are placed into one small space. It is an in between space. Travelers move between home and work, work and home, wishing the time would go faster. "M2" is a performance piece which focuses on issues of class, race, self-identity, and self-perception, taking place within a car on the M2 subway line in Paris, France. Traversing the city, the M2 is at the cross-section of Parisian life, culturally, and socio-economically. "M2" is composed of monologues interwoven with pedestrian movement choreography and creative stage design to delve deeply into the inter- and intra-personal relationships forged in this unique setting. This original show gives voice to these commuters and embodies the shared experience of riding public transportation.