INTERVIEW WITH CHOREOGRAPHER KATIE LAIN

 

Katie Lain is an Austin native with a love for all things dance, especially improvisation and creating choreography. Katie is also a writer and a massage therapist and finds inspiration in the natural world and within human relationships. 

Though she began her degree at ACC and continues to take occasional classes here as a proud Riverbat, Katie is also a UT student where she is pursuing a Humanities degree. She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to art-making and scholarship and spends time learning at the intersection of dance, liberal arts, and the social sciences. She is currently engaging with practice as research and writing a thesis that examines memory and trauma in performance, which is uniquely situated to investigate these topics because of how performance cultivates creative embodiment and kinesthetic empathy. After graduating from UT, she plans to continue making work and also further her education by pursuing a graduate degree and licensure in Dance Movement Therapy. 

This piece, “again,” comes out of personal fraught experiences within relationships. Often, we unwittingly and repetitively seek out relational dynamics which mirror our earliest attachment experiences with our caregivers, perhaps in an attempt to “work out” those wounds which remain unresolved in our systems. It is this absence of safety and care that creates relational trauma and teaches us that love is a threat. Still, as interdependent beings, we continue to reach toward connection. Our commitment to opening our hearts in the face of the terror of love is a beautiful thing, and discovering our agency to break deep cycles is necessary healing. Katie hopes that the audience finds kinesthetic resonance in their bodies while witnessing this dance and that we can all allow space for attachment grief to be felt and acknowledged so we can soften our hearts and approach relationships with tenderness.