Since 2020 Kay has been immersed in a self-initiated study that considers how dance can be learned, transmitted, and sown through radical forms of pedagogy.
Her seeking began through an extensive dialogue with three chosen artist-mentors: Melanie Maar, Eleanor Hullihan and Samita Sinha. Each artist shared a particular teaching with Ottinger to immerse herself in as well as on her own, with no expectation of result. Ottinger has since been learning, re-learning, and integrating these teachings into her own unique expressions where movement, voice, and object collide. Responsive to place and time, her study first started to develop from within her home in Jackson Heights, Queens, and at New York’s Judson Church. She now lives primarily in Colombia, where she splits her time between the cities Medellin, Bogotá, and the rural mountain town of Silvia, Cauca. The outdoor landscapes of Colombia along with the various Casa de Culturas (culture houses) in the cities have continued to shape and change the becoming of her practice.
Shedding her own investment in the dance industry’s traditions of presentation and training, her work explores how an artistic practice can be learned outside the dancer-choreographer dynamic. She instead pursues learning through active and transformative exchanges with her teachers and peers. Continually her own witness, Ottinger now performs in situ for herself, and any sentient beings with whom she shares space—from strangers, to birds, and cows—as a journey on becoming through movement. Where this work leads, and to whom its lessons may be shared, and formed again, is her next chapter of exploration.
The beads originated in a collaboration between Melanie and sound artist Christian Schroeder and a version of the beads were first sighted in Taiwan with Uncle Oh. This is one of three artistic practices that was transmitted to Kay as part of her recent project.
Read more in NYTimes article, “Using the Wisdom of Dance to Find Our Way Back to Our Bodies”
by Gia Kourlas.