What Matters
Video, Rope
Artist Statement: This aerial rope piece is a meditation on isolation, loss, and the quiet resilience of hope that carried us through the unknown. Created over nine months in 2021 and filmed in my home in San Francisco, it speaks to the lingering effects of a global pandemic that stripped us of connection, direction, and time’s usual rhythm. Movement became a language through which I explored a deep sense of separation and solitude, capturing the disorientation and yearning to escape that colored each day.
The rope is both a tether to reality and a pathway to dreams, a way to drift between the weight of loss and the lightness of hope. Through suspended sequences that evoke floating and falling, I sought to mirror our collective navigation of a suspended reality—a time of dreaming, searching, and ultimately finding resilience within ourselves. This piece is a testament to the strength we summon to move forward, even in the midst of the unknown. It’s about what matters.
Hope
Live Act, Rope
Reach out if interested in seeing full act
Artist Statement: This piece explores the journey from despair to hope through the language of aerial rope. It begins in a place of deep longing, as if calling out to the universe for something beyond the emptiness—a plea for help when all else seems uncertain. The universe answers with a quiet but powerful directive: to look outward, beyond isolation, and toward community. As the act unfolds, the movement becomes a dance between reaching inward and reaching outward, mirroring the strength and solace we find in connection with others. Through friends and community, my character finds a path forward, illuminated by shared experiences and collective resilience. This piece is about hope as an act of opening up, of receiving the strength we may not have on our own, and finding a way forward with others by our side.
Sommer Panage 