Edgar Allan Poe | Rhythm is at the Heart

Music and dance share more than rhythm—they share intention. Poe believed music was the highest art form, and I understand why. It bypasses debate and gets straight to the truth. Good choreography should do the same. Poe made rhythm a huge part of his poetry - it was almost more important to him than the words themselves.

I resonate that that. I start with a beat - at times my own heartbeat - then with breath, memory, and weight. I want movement that comes from somewhere lived. The dancers I work with are collaborators, not instruments. Together we pull meaning from the silence, from the margins. We’re not trying to impress. We’re trying to get to something real.

That process is sacred. Not in a lofty or performative way—but in the sense that it calls you to attention. To honesty. To witness. Dance can look polished and still lie. I’m not interested in that. I want the kind of movement that leaves a mark. That interrupts. That matters.

I describe choreography as a form of journalism—especially when the story hasn’t been fully told. Poe was a man of contradictions, and his work reflects the cultural dissonance of his time. The ballet doesn’t flatten that. It leans into it.

In The Curious Life of Edgar Allan Poe, the tension between what’s said and what’s felt becomes physical. The quill becomes a cord. His body becomes the pen. The people left out of history—the enslaved, the overlooked, the women—don’t just appear. They shape the story. They move it.

That’s what dance allows: a reordering. Not to rewrite history, but to confront it differently. We don't narrate. We embody. And in that embodiment, truths emerge.