“Sit with us” is a contemporary dance piece that will be performed at the Aikido Peace Education Center, 1101 N State St. in Bellingham, on July 26, 2025, 6 pm. The process of this dance project began with exploring personal struggles from unhealthy and controlling environments. This piece aims to tackle, emphasize, and reiterate how bodies socialized as feminine are seen as a threat, are damaged, and can be controlled or instructed. The dancers explore their body's knowledge of the corrupt performance of "goodness" or "correctness" instructed by cultural norms of femininity. We also explore our body’s genuine feelings of sensuality, rage, and strength and experience how these feelings appear differently under the audience’s gaze.  This piece also highlights how relationships within our community or even with our “allies” can become toxic, manipulative, and controlling.

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By literally sitting with our bodies and their many diverse qualities of knowledge formed by our lived experiences, "Sit with us" proposes an alternative way of engaging with each other. When we center the qualities of our body's knowledge, connections become possible between us that are not possible when we punish or limit these qualities, such as discomfort or messiness, in the pursuit of performing a disembodied idea of "goodness" or "correctness." 

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The cast consists of six dancers who represent different phases of life: Bodies navigating experiences of girlhood, womanhood, and gender-expansive identities, bodies socialized within female gender roles and shaped by cultural norms of femininity.

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TICKETS: https://www.simpletix.com/e/sit-with-us-tickets-222707