MEET ILYANA HUGHES
S P A C E Rising is an iteration of our S P A C E residency program, designed specifically to support our (R)evolution Mentorship Interns. Meet Ilyana Hughes! And make sure to join us for S P A C E Rising Showcase on October 10 & 11 at 7pm.
What has been your favorite part of the process?
I’ve just really enjoyed how much fun I’ve had in this whole process, both creatively and socially. My choreographic training has always been pretty rigid, where every move had to have a meaning, and I’ve really loved working with a more abstract concept for this residency and having complete creative freedom, being able to create whatever I want, whatever feels good rather than working to assign meaning to every step. It’s also been such a pleasure working alongside Iverson. He’s an incredibly talented mover, but working together has also just been so much fun. I’ve never looked forward to rehearsals as much as I have the last 8 weeks 🙂
Other than dance, what mediums are important to the overall theme of your piece? This could be music, projection, spoken word, visual etc. What role will these aspects play?
In addition to dance, I’m also incorporating paint in this work. There’s a quote by Lyall Wattson where he talks about dance being unique in the sense that the art and artist are one in the same, as well as dance being an art form that exists in both space and time. This quote has really stuck with me since I heard it and has influenced my practice quite a bit, and became the main inspiration behind this piece. I wanted to find a way to allow the dance to live on in space after time has passed, and decided to show this by painting a canvas as we dance. We’ll also be working alongside Bryttney Mischele, a super talented painter who will be painting a portrait of us live as we dance. I was also really interested by the idea of how as we paint the canvas, we will also become painted, playing into the idea that we are our art, and as life changes and imitates art, art will change and imitate life. I’ve never created a multimedia work like this so it’s been really fun to explore other aspects of my artistry to go along with dance.