Raechel Corey

Artist Statement

My body of work combines dance and music through counterpoint to explore the juxtaposition of rhythm and movement. I am drawn to assembling the moments where dance and music aligns and when it contradicts.

My process starts by sifting through hours of music that ranges from renaissance to afrobeats, classical to folk songs, to find one that stands out. Next, I research details about the music, which includes the genre, artist's intent, and the cultural relevance to the overarching idea of the project. Through an improvisational process, I take this research and create a movement bank. I then enter the editing phase where dance and musical counterpoint are combined. I enjoy overlapping movement passages, breaking regular patterns, and discovering how the music guides what comes next.

My master thesis, Rusted Echoes, is a seventeen-minute dance ensemble that explores musical counterpoint through the choreographic process to create relationships by layering movement phrases. This way of working has helped me engage with movement and music by disrupting the formulaic nature of musical counterpoint by focusing on the spatial relationships between dancers. My experience with counterpoint will inform a new project I am working on where I combine humor and classical ballet based on Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.