Amber Ortega

Amber Ortega is a choreographer, educator, and collaborator working with relational aesthetics, movement, digital media, networked, and physical spaces. A native of San Antonio, she holds an M.F.A. in choreography from Jacksonville University/White Oak and a B.F.A. in performance and choreography from Ohio State University. Ortega is currently adjunct faculty at Palo Alto College and UT San Antonio. Former artistic director of W-I-P/Works In Progress, an artist-service organization, for 17 years she cultivated a safe and nurturing environment where dance and performance-based artists could freely develop and present new and experimental work. She was director and founder of SpareWorks.dance and founding member of Modern Dancer's Co-Laboratory (ModaColab), a contemporary dance cooperative in South Texas. She is a two-time recipient of The Artist Foundation Grant of San Antonio. She is a founding member of FARO (Facilitating Artistic Research & Ontologies) and the program director of Decolonizing Dance: Celebrating Bodies of Color festival in San Antonio, Texas.

Much of Ortega’s work focuses on creating dialogue between artists of different modes and practices to encourage broader ideas of art and art-making. Inspired by human interaction and relationships, as well as the environments that create, shape and guide them, she utilizes platforms such as text/writing, film, theater and networked online spaces for expanded understandings of dance. In 2016 she debuted Queer Be-Longing as an augmented reality film at Luminaria Contemporary Art Festival. In 2017 the film was presented at the Gloria Anzaldúa Conference El Mundo Zurdo. She was recently accepted as a resident artist at the Cucalorus Dance Makers Retreat and was invited to present her ongoing work with Queer Be-Longing at the Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative' Symposium at Middlesex University, London. Over the last three years, her work has expanded beyond performance and directing, to include writing on dance. In 2017, she presented her non-scientific study on using social media as a tool for dance education at the National Dance Education Organization Conference. Ortega’s article, Corporeal Narrative; Queering Contemporary Dance in San Antonio Towards Voices of Color was recently published in Texas Arts & Culture Magazine.

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2/24/2020

shadows to light

full sun

horn da da da
wind on my left side
a rub to my left eye
a pong pong
machine machine da da da

now wind to my right cheek
walking towards/against/into
the tunnel of wind
the light tells me I'm still not outside yet

now your'e outside
-chirp chirp
but squealing of machines
180°

I feel the sun leaving my back-going back in

Will I go upstairs
Will you go upstairs

FEAR
ANXIETY
STAIRS

Don't Turn Around Down

Afraid of running out of SPACE

Now- turning to right in
shadow
cool
cold
Blocks that block a sensation of falling backwards

Will I go up
Will u go up

This time--bouncy bouncing

a pushing under my feet
a gripping hand and tight left scapula
I don't want to fall backward- fear & anxiety

Stone- concrete MEMORY
cool
cold
This is the 2nd floor
my left shoulder wants to lean on the wall for assistance
my left side decides to close the distance
my left knee glides with pressure against the long bench so
I want to keep walking
my knees soften
my pelvis falls
my hips allow a sit
Again my brain will
The body chooses to not fall backwards
so it sits

Will I go down
Will u go down

I eyes see dark reflections

Are my eyes working?
My body is not listening
to my eyes
My spine is deciding everything

I'm taking the elevator
the choice is too dangerous

THIS IS THE KITCHEN
DO NOT ENTER

Sun heat tells my body I am outside
water tells me its ok to fall now
Rough sticky stone on my right palm
my jacket sticks to its texture

1 2 3 4 5 1

The escape is made so easy

If no one tells me to stay
I will go
If no one tells me to go
I may stay

Wind to my face
my chest
my belly

tok tok
my eye keeps squinting
bells bells_ _ _ bells
bells bells_ _ _ bells
bells bells bells bells
bells bells bells bells
bells bells bells bells bells
Fuentes first told me that the city was a beast

******************************************
Poetics of Participation
[Position] - View = Theos/Theory
↓
Vista
↓
Vision

[God as a spatial practice]

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2/25/2020

I began a feedback loop with the machine sound outside gradually evolving to following it.

Touched palm leaves to find a structure.

Threading fingers and touching sound.

My 3 Tasks:

collect a pattern in the environment using touch. study the tactile pattern and explore the range, possibilities and movement translation of it
transfer, transpose the pattern to your body in an exploration of internalizing the pattern {feeling it move and place itself inside the skin} and externally as an architecture of the body
Turn the attention to sound as a tactile force. Enter into a contact improvisation with the sound. Be precise about responding to the TOUCH of sound and not just the idea of it. The sound must be attended to as touch and contact.

+++++++++++++++++

The following tasks rolled in and out of my head as a pulse and as a rhthym and ultimately as a score for to task my body with, to bring to me and my space a situation;

I feel everything I can not see behind me

[I was not able to do this. I tried but this was not possible for me]

Explore rolling thru the lowest point in space through the highest

I pour weight into surfaces that have corners or edges. I allow the detouring of the surfaces become momentum into another

Who can you see without violating their individuality, approach the energetics of their individuation.

[this last bolded part became a mantra that played on and off, it was my constant underlying score. which means this score was the score for the other scores. This task, tasked the other tasks]

*********************************************************
My closing reflection after remembering and reviewing my experience was the following:

the task is ONLY the task. No memory from past lives enter here. Tasking the body NOT performing the body.

image, ana sanchez colberg

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2/26/2020

Plan of Escape

They gave it to us
They didn't know it
they gave us a rocket ship

you can't touch it
you can't climb it
you can't get in it

you have to break the rules

are you willing
am i willing

breaking the rules
plan of escape
we're breaking the rules

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

domestic spaces = happy spaces

~lefebvre

hmmmm.....why?
houses can be violent spaces for women.
houses are made and kept for men by women
many times terrorized women
{my evil aside}

feedback look

↓

communication

↓

disruption ↪
↓

→

consequences ↳

changes

↓↓

new communications

what spaces are we choosing?
how do we build the frame to get to the space of play?

2/28/2020

AGENCY as a spatial practice

clarify

this is an OPEN COMPOSITION

I need shoes.

scale + time are related to quantity & quality of what we are offering

What am I offering?

2/29/2020

It was me against the machine. Pathways to exit. Repetition as ritual becoming Reiterations.

side note: once there is a shift from the responding to the incoming data OR once there is a break with the feedback loop between me + situation and the environment [landscape] to sensing the inward landscape as it is tousled about by the environment [landscape] THEN the performance has shifted to that of another kind.

Haikus = Glue

all haikus written by Brady Jolly

Press Play===Hear while you Read

Go fuck your front row

I’ll entertain just this once

Keep your tossed petals

Where did you wander?

And what did you discover?

I’m twiddling thoughts

No Resolution

Empty words lacking substance

Yes, Revolution

Remembering Self

I’m trying to see an I

Greater than Ego.

You know what I mean.

Riddled with good intentions

Placed with dirty thoughts

If you want to live

In the judgement of my past

I won’t be joining

The tears are fleeting

But they exist as weather

Loving and leaving

You didn’t break me

I now have new memories

You were just a thought

You're the phantom limb

Filled with the pains that ignite

Pure destructive thoughts

Do you remember

When I cradled your baggage

And said to forgive?

Longing for water

Her tears taste like the ocean

Still, we allow bloom.

We took and pulled

Heartstrings into safety nets

Until we both fell

So heavy and calm

We were reckoning a storm

That washed us ashore

Those old love letters

That were tucked away and saved

Have become haunted

Do me a favor

And please listen openly

To your desires

Last time I checked

I counted two emerged souls

Rising into one

I will not settle

For just ordinary love.

Give me soul crushing

Skin draped across my bed

I wonder what you are like

With lust running out

We needed to end

It took me ten months to know

The grass is greener

The only time kept

Were the ones counting deep breaths

And exhaling you

Angry old lady

The bitterness on your tongue

Is the saddest song.

The lesson I’ve learned

Is that soulmates come and go

Just like ocean tides

I can look forward

To you meeting you again

While lacking restraint

Go on, take the flame

Run wild to ignite the world

And never look back

Please gaze upon me

To say we are magical

Even though we’re lost

The struggle with dark

Circadian fuckery

Yet you give a spark

Enter with caution

They love their guns more than you

Sucking off on ICE

We are born naked

All of us dressing in drag

In hopes of passing

Rushing through our lives

Death can be inconvenient

Where is the balance?

We planted the seeds

Getting dirty, finding holes

Impatient with growth

Drawing my finger

Gently across your body

Learning all your lines

Hearing your text tone

Is such a delightful sound

Excitement comes through

Please give me the chance

To unveil all your curtains

Through all the seasons

I guess I don’t know

The gentle wiring of hearts

It’s an enigma

My comfort don’t mind

Murder me with glitter love

You bleed me each time

Let’s always make sure

To tell the story of us

And keep writing it

It’s vulnerable

Staring into stranger’s eyes

Can they see my soul?

Judging my sadness

I wonder if they see pain

They found out my game

Gentle cradling

Holding as much as we can

Trying to stop time

We awaken here

Building new dreams together

The future of “us”

Her mind can compel

Like an aphrodisiac

The body in spells

A waking of parts

The algorithm of grief

A chapter of Love

How to provide space

What’s the recipe for this

When it needs holding?

She teaches me things

Possibilities and such

My soul expanding

Hey bitch fuck you cuz

Nobody gets anything

Except me; kisses

We have this distance

But too fragile to get close

That’s wrapped up in fear

Throw in the towel

Heavy and drenching in tears

Light it on fire

The hard decisions

Brewing deep inside the gut

Can be heartbreaking

This is what cracked me

Unexpected trains roaring

Triggering fake dams

We are still learning

You have yet to see my eyes

While trying to hide

I’ve bitten my tongue

Digesting it to the fool

And yet, we’re hungry

We’re a lot alike

Empathetic to charred souls

The tide will recede

I shared a mix tape

That I just knew was for you

And now, here we are

I still have your scent

Lingering on my sweet skin

Where yours use to be

Was I a year late?

Maybe just at the right time?

I await your scent.