Spotlight on New Solo Works
Sam Koseff is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and summa cum laude Goucher College graduate in dance, gender studies, and integrative arts. They’ve also trained with AIM by Kyle Abraham, Orange Grove Dance, Ballet West, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Westside School of Ballet.
Sam’s new solo work, Laughter Emerges in the Realization that All Along the Original was Derived, will premiere as part of Full Circle Dance Company’s performance Ritual and Revolution at the Baltimore Museum of Art on November 1. This solo explores ritual and revolution through a lens of gender identity. Growing up as a woman, Sam experienced both beauty and discomfort in girlhood rituals. Laughter Emerges will honor, explore, and share that experience, while also considering transition as a form of revolution.
“My goal as an artist is to create works that people relate to, feel, and learn from,” Sam explains. “I find dance to be the most natural language and form of communication, and I want to utilize that to share my own and others’ stories.”
Jade Mong graduated from Western Oregon University in 2020 with a degree in dance. She spent 4 years performing with Rainbow Dance Theatre, touring nationally and internationally, and she has also performed and created choreography for Company Movimiento, based in Eugene, Oregon.
Jade’s new solo piece, Merdeka, explores the journey towards national sovereignty through the body of an individual. “Merdeka is a cry of independence in Malay,” the choreographer explains. “As a colonized people, the people of Malaya were taught to mirror their colonizers’ language, dress, culture, and prejudices. My piece explores the fracturing of the control and affectations of the colonizer and a return to indigenous and diasporic expression of self that creates a multicultural sovereign nation such as Malaysia.”
Jade says, “To me, the best kind of dance is the kind that evokes a kinesthetic reaction in the viewer, that connects you empathetically to someone else’s struggle or joy. It explores ideas in a visceral way that can be more accessible or emotionally compelling than just watching the news or reading an article. In that way, dance is a tool for liberation and understanding.”
See both Laughter Emerges in the Realization that All Along the Original was Derived and Merdeka November 1 at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
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