Curtis Stedge MFA, MA, CMA
The liminal space of creation, the realm of the unknown, of unlimited possibility, unfettered and unrestrained by conventional thought and pragmatism is a scary place. Like the magician, the artist inhabits this realm of potential, creating and destroying worlds, shaping and reshaping form for functional and expressive means.
We are creators and destroyers of worlds, both individual and collective, learning right from wrong as we build up and break down. As the Buddha once said, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we create the world.” (The Dhammapada)
I have always been drawn to magic, the very essence of which is incomprehensible creation. This is probably why there is a certain magnetism that I experience, in the allure of the Trickster figure, the crosser of borders, the creator of worlds. It is my strongly held belief that the universe provides us with exactly what we are in need of at any given moment along our timeline. Aligning the perfect conditions for the perfect storm of colliding factors. It provides the catalyst. But it is our responsibility to take hold of the opportunity and see the reaction through to its end.
This perspective greatly informs my creative practice in transforming the mundane, and in actively engaging and transporting an audience into and out of varied multi-sensorial states, mindscapes, and worlds both individually and communally built and experienced, in order to alter both our perception of the world around us and our role in it.
All of us have this innate generative, creative power within us, not just artists. It is this which I most wish to impart through my art and creative scholarship. The potential that rests in all of us to create our own existence, positive or negative, and our inherent need to share those worlds we create with others. I see myself as an actively engaged participant in this holistic role of creator/destroyer, in the artistry of creating dances, in the magic of conjuring form where before there was none, and in the shifting or dismantling of paradigms that no longer serve us.
My creative research interests reflect these truths as I seek to understand dance as an agent of communal change and community building. Specifically, I am interested in the role of dance in conflict transformation and peacebuilding; and how immersive, interactive site-specific work can build a localized and immediate sense of community.
In 2015, I worked alongside Jose Pascal da Rocha, a professor who studies and teaches on conflict resolution at Columbia University. We focused on the application of Laban Movement Analysis to conflict mediation and peace building, the intersection of the semiotics of space, individual/group behavior, and non-verbal communication, with conflict prevention/reconciliation. This work greatly informs my work with community. I predict that my future research will continue to explore the communal benefits of dance and movement through performance and ritual.
In 2018, I re-staged an evening length work called Invoking Justice, at the Rochester Fringe Festival. The show originally premiered at the University of Maryland, in 2016 and is an immersive and interactive, work of dance-theater. A social commentary, both on the failure of the American justice system to balance the scales, and on our individual and collective failings to balance our communities, and ourselves, while recognizing and promoting our inherent unity and interconnectedness. The show cast the audience as the jury in a trial that placed a personified Justice on the defendant’s stand and asked them to weigh the evidence to determine how they would proceed in community to ultimately either absolve or incriminate themselves as represented by the archetype.
My work at Bard High School Early College Newark from 2019 to 2023 followed two tracks: the application of LBMS as a framework and tool with which to decolonize dance curriculum and pedagogy; and Defining Space | Making Place exploring the socio-politics of space and the defining of public space through collective movement creation and performance, partly funded by a Bard Early College Fellowship.
A new work I have begun to develop, Body of Letters, seeks to bring to life the personal accounts and stories of participants by providing them with a framework to use as a vehicle to organize and tell their story-in-motion. Taking inspiration from NPR’s Story Corps, Body of Letters approaches the art of storytelling through the body dynamically moving through space and time.
