ARTBREAK is a practice based on experiences of heartbreak in art making. There is much heartbreak originating from the hierarchical structures of art training and creation. Performance is hopefully an experience, both for performer and audience, of embodiment. Embodiment is a connection to somatic experiences and to the agency of choice. Yet, this is not often the case. Training the body, the voice, the craft can dislodge the connection between the performer and the human, as a strong focus is often on the external - what the person looks, sounds and performs like, and how well they follow orders. And there are belief systems (often Western and American) about who the person is, that can get calcified through the fractured self. Belief systems about who we are as artists, how expendable we are and how the outside is more important than the inside, that extend past the rehearsal rooms and performance spaces and can induce a hypnosis that have us creating from a place of lack and fear.

Thus: ARTBREAK

ARTBREAK is a collaboration of reclaiming, excavating and finding ways to perform and experience embodiment in performance, that does not split us off from ourselves. A process of discovering and sharing what techniques can set us free, and what techniques have shut us off from parts of ourselves.

Dance and performance were born in ritual - destroyed by capitalism, white supremacy, elitism, body shaming. We aim to make work that is activist work, that is disarming and funny and joyful and spiritual work. To make work with all of the self is to be free. And to be free creates space to free others.

ARTBREAK is wanting to reach deeper into the roots of ourselves hopefully to heal the larger heart of our lineages through recognition and forgiveness.

ARTBREAK COLLABORATORS

Lucy Smith (she/they) is a recovering theater person. Lucy has performed and toured with the SITI Company, the TEAM, Anonymofus Ensemble, and performed with companies in New York City, Portland Oregon and Atlanta Georgia. She holds a BA in Drama/Dance and Film (double major) from Bard College and a MFA from Columbia University in Acting. Her first play and one person show was produced by Synchronicity theater, dramaturged by Amber Bradshaw (she/they) and directed by Rachel may (she/her) Lucy is a working title playwrights member, a massage therapist, a childrens yoga teacher, a qoya dance teacher and a weird comic book maker. Lucy was in the 2022 ETA artist in residence program with Fly on a Wall and are very much in love with all of them. They are a mother to a magical 7 year old who is their greatest inspiration for life, art and everything that means anything.

Amelia Reiser (she/they) is working to dismantle her desire for mastery, while simultaneously honoring her Virgo tendencies, creating space for her ever expanding understanding of her queerness in the world.  She is a movement artist, performer, and teacher. Their work explores paradoxes such as grief and joy + pleasure and devastation, in attempts to research human desires for beauty, poetics, validation, and connection. She seeks to examine how trauma can shape our lives and how movement helps spark transformation and healing in both movement artists and viewers. Their work nurtures creative impulse, often exploring everyday human interactions to question our making of the world through language and body memory. They have been performing professionally in Atlanta for the last decade with companies such as T Lang Dance and staibdance alongside her own choreographic creative pursuits. Amelia was in the 2021 ETA artist in residence program with Fly on a Wall and was also a Hambidge fellow in 2021. Her work has been shown in various venues across Atlanta and elsewhere including The Creatives Project Drive Thru ATL, HomeTraining presented by Kelly Bartnick and Kathleen Wessel, Elephant Gallery, and The University of Georgia Department of Dance.