Pale was a trio choreographed in 1998 while I was an MFA candidate at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. At this time I was reading The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, “a book that demonstrates how the preoccupation with the body has intensified and why adolescent girls and their bodies have borne the brunt of social change in the twentieth century.” Source material for the choreography of Pale’s movement began with photographs, advertisements, and postcards showing how girls and their bodies have changed since the nineteenth century. Each performer adopted a personal selection of the gestures and allowed them to develop into her body story. From those base phrases, my composition then evolved through the construction of collective relationships in ritual, imitation, repetition, unison, disintegration, rebellion and struggle. 

Costumes, set, soundscore, and movement language were integral performance components and of deep interest in my designs from the inception of this work. In order to give the audience a view into the world containing the women, I wanted to invite an element of voyeurism. The result was three women in red and meters of white elastic sewn into soft cages, metal buckets, a pair of red shoes, and a soundscape of bathtub singing voices.