Current Touring Works
SAXYN Dance Works touring works include Seolh, how hard will you hold me?, lorelei, and a mixed rep offering.
Seolh, is a contemporary dance-theater retelling of a chapter in Clarissa Pinkola Estés book, Women Who Run With The Wolves, entitled “Soulskin”, that explores the Scottish myth of the "selkies", mythic sea creatures — half woman, half seal. Choreographed and directed by Thryn Saxon with an original score from resident composer Bre Short.
Seolh is designed for meaningful community-engagement, through cross-community collaboration with local dancers or university students. We would love to partner with your city or university to engage in a fully integrated performance of the work.
7 minutes // solo dancer
Inspired by the German myth of the siren Lorelei, the work examines the tension between visibility and concealment, desire and projection.
Although performed topless, the solo never reveals the dancer's face and rarely the front of her body. Instead, the audience encounters an ever-shifting landscape of skin, muscle, and breath through the back, shoulders, and arms. By denying the expected vantage point, Lorelei resists the conventions of the male gaze and asks viewers to confront their own expectations of the female body. Here, mystery is not an invitation to possess, but an assertion of autonomy. The siren's power lies not in what she reveals, but in what she refuses to surrender.
10 minutes // 2 dancers
This duet utilizes partnering, both intimate and highly physical, to explore questions of closeness, overextension, fatigue, and tenderness. It asks, how well can we ever really know another person?
Perhaps the truest compassion is in acknowledging what we can never know, and laying that effort down to direct our precious energy toward a deeper connection. The harder we hold the less we understand.
65 minutes // 8 performers (scaleable and customizable through a community-integrated adaptation. See video below for more information)