“Not only was it a surprise, but a moving and exceptional experience.”
This work premiered in January 2023 in Los Angeles at G-Son Studios. Original composition by Max Berlin, with live musical performance by Max Berlin, Sophia Bacelar, and Michael Staffeldt. Later, a reimagined version of You Live In My Spine was presented at the Odyssey Summer Dance Festival in July 2024, curated by Barbara Wittmann.
“Zeiger beautifully incorporated space and time within the room, rather than just within the choreography itself.”
An extension of the Body Memory Method, You Live In My Spine (YLIMS) explores not only what is held in the most crucial bone structure in our bodies, but also how we approach dealing with what is there, and whether or not our approach hinders or helps our efforts and connections to each other. Drawing from the research of esteemed scholars Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps The Score), Dr. Alia Crum (Stanford Mind & Body Lab), and James Clear (Atomic Habits), YLIMS asks the performers and audience alike to consider their body’s memory, daily habits, and mindsets in regards to their perceived pain, both physically and emotionally. As we are considering, at the core, what our body’s experience is, rather than that of our conscious mind, using movement to explore and convey these questions is only natural.
The one thing all humans have in common is that we all have a body, which we are merely borrowing from the Earth, and the highest hope we can hold for ourselves and each other is that we can both learn from and give wisdom to our bodies, leaving them better off than how we found them.