1. What can the audience expect from your piece ENOUGH.?
They can expect the unexpected and to leave questioning their lives.
Cyptic? I know. That’s the fun part about it (for me)!
2. How did you come up with the idea for your piece ENOUGH.?
ENOUGH. is part 1 of a trilogy and I actually came up with part 2 – BROWN SKIN first, during my time living/working in Los Angeles.
I have been sitting on the idea for 20 years! A few years ago, a dance colleague planted the seed in my ear, ”Mike, you’re doing all this work for other people, when are we going to see you in your OWN work?” I mentioned I had a piece I had been sitting on (BROWN SKIN) but didn’t follow through with anything further beyond that conversation. A couple years later at a dinner after a performance by this colleague, some other colleagues directed the conversation attention towards me and asked the same question – literally! ”Mike, when are we going to get to see you in your own work?”. In discussing the theme of BROWN SKIN (the complex struggle of internal and external identity by persons living with brown skin), the conversation meandered it’s way through various shared multicultural experiences and perspectives, and the trilogy took shape starting with ENOUGH. as the introductory point via exploring the complexities of navigating self-identity before moving into group identity dynamics.
3. How has the process of creating ENOUGH. looked like? (For example: What was the hardest part/challenges of the process, what was more easy?)
The process has actually been pretty easy since I knew what I wanted to say so clearly. The process started with a two week residency last summer (July 2025) and I had access to the studio whenever I wanted, so I locked in and worked creatively from 8-10hrs per day for 14days straight – listening to music, trying out movement, recording/film improv sequences, mapping out the connections between the sections, drafting text ideas into a script. No lunches with friends, no fikas, no phone calls, etc. – I was laser-focused! At the end of the two week residency, I did a showing for 10 people, and because my ideas were so coherent already, they thought that was the finished product/production – it was only my first official draft! From there, I kept refining movement, redrafting the script, having more conversations about the theme and getting more insight and feedback from friends.
4. Your piece explores the hardships of feeling that we are enough- how do you feel about your artistic work- is it hard to feel like you are doing enough work when creating?
”Trust the process” is a mantra of the creative process performing artists tyr to live by. That is because that is the actual hardest part – believing that you are doing enough. That your artistry is enough. That what you are creating is enough. And yes, I definitely went through a moment of questioning my artistic enoughness. A friend/colleague/fellow choreographer Aloun Marchal put it one layer even deeper – ”The process is for us, the performance is for audience.” And what he meant is to trust not having to know all the details or all the answer upfront while you are creating. Give yourself the creative freedom to explore and try things, to not say no to a suggestion or idea and see what happens. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Even in receiving feedback, there is a healthy balance between receiving feedback and maintaining your artistic vision/integrity. Once I remembered and reminded myself of these mantras, I was reconfirmed in my creative process and direction and kept driving forward without getting hungup or hitting a creative block..
5. Do you want the audience to know anything more about your artistic practice?
Like my artistic background, my artistry and artistic work strongly reflect a multifacted compostion driven by the intent to dismantale archaic boundaries, bridge cultural gaps, and empower under-represented voices. For me, dance is a relationship between the music, the text, the choreographer, the dancer, and the audience, and the body is a vessel for wordless communication within these relationships. Within these communications there is a story to be told with a message. My message is to LIVE! – a channeling of the above mentioned human emotional experience and freedom of expression. Choreographically, my artistic work relies on the performer to connect to the inner-self in order to exude expression, energy and authenticity, utilizing my knowledge,development, and experiences within human kinetics and movement from traditional West African (Ghanaian/Senegalese/Congolese), Modern (Horton/Graham/Dunham), Hip Hop, Breaking, Locking, Jazz (Vernacular, Modern, and Theatrical) House, Salsa, Samba, Afro-Carribean, Voguing and Burlesque. Each of these movement genres has a cultural history of its own, rooted in a human emotional experience and a story to be told of desire for freedom of expression. Live. Be Free. Dance.