Embodiment Project

Embodiment Project is an urban dance theater company that uses live song, poetry, and personal narrative to articulate subconscious stories that arise from distinct senses of "embodiment."

Founded by Nicole Klaymoon in 2009, Embodiment Project’s mission is to explore movement and the body as central sources of and vessels for collaborative artistic expression. Embodiment Project bridges the traditional divide separating the so-called “high art” of modern dance and “street” dances which, while rarely performed in Western theatrical contexts, are nonetheless longstanding cultural traditions. By abstracting different underground styles from their traditional performance contexts to reinterpret them as concert dance, Embodiment Project (EP) presents movement that purposefully and productively transforms socially accepted ways of embodying race, sexuality, femininity and masculinity.

Klaymoon and her dancers are committed to researching the origins, histories, and forms of the dances EP performs. Having apprenticed and studied intensively under several legendary masters of these forms, EP chooses to move beyond the clichéd presentational modes of concert dance, striving to create space for difficult but inescapable cross-cultural dialogues to begin with grace and at times biting honesty. Klaymoon also actively creates opportunities for direct and ongoing critical analysis of her work by herself, her dancers and outside viewers, to question her own perspectives and treat her work as a community-centered process.