I've always been a collector. As a kid it was stamps, coins, rocks, whatever I could sort and keep. The impulse never left. It just shifted. Now I collect photos. Shadow selfies are one series among several.

I look for places where my shadow and the environment collide in an interesting way. A texture that breaks up the shape. A surface that distorts it. Two shadows that shouldn't be there at once. The right light at the right angle on the right ground.

I am, by nature, a rational person. I find comfort in logic, in structure, in understanding the mechanics of things. Yet, as a dancer and choreographer, I must also acknowledge something less tangible something I hesitate to name but cannot deny: the metaphysical.

Dance exists in a space that defies pure reason. It is a transient art form, vanishing as soon as it is performed. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, which remain fixed in time, dance leaves only an imprint in memory, a residue in the body of both performer and witness. This ephemerality is both its beauty and its enigma. What is it, exactly, that we engage with when we dance? Is it merely a series of biomechanical actions, shaped by rhythm and coordination? Or is there something else something beyond the body, beyond physics, beyond what can be neatly measured?

I struggle with this question because I do not subscribe to mysticism. I do not believe in a divine force guiding movement. And yet, when I dance, I cannot ignore the feeling that something is happening that exceeds the sum of its parts. A gesture is never just a gesture; a movement, when fully inhabited, seems to tap into something beyond the immediate something felt but unseen.

I still wrestle with this. I still return to logic, to reason, to the desire to explain. But the more I dance, the more I choreograph, the more I find myself conceding to the possibility that to dance is to step into a space where the rational and the intangible coexist. And perhaps that is enough not to seek definitive answers, but to allow dance to be what it is: an encounter with something just beyond reach.