I am a queer dancer, artist, and ritual, embodied learning, and celebration facilitator living on unceded Mohican, Mohawk, and Haudenosaunee lands, colonially known as the Hudson Valley, New York. I am made by these lands, the lands of Massachusetts, Vermont, and California, and the low lands of the Netherlands, where both my parents and all of my grandparents are from. I am committed to understanding the past as best we can together, and to everything from here on out being work with the intention for the mutual thriving of all life.
I am provoked by a dedication to care, contradiction, reckoning and reparations, joy/grief, eros, and humans’ porous, interconnected, and messy natures. I spend time looking for and creating bridges through pedagogy, performance, language, celebration, and personal and collective restoration and transformation. In this process I create performances, organize events, design and lead workshops, offer one-on-one counseling & sex and gender expansion work, write, and make videos, gifts, talismans, and environments for (re)enchantment. I see my work—which is always collaborative—as a conduit for knowing/unknowing what is here and now, for remembering and practicing intimacy at many proximities.
I was based in Troy, NY for almost a decade and am indebted to the city where I learned what it can mean to coalition build; to be messy, joyful, resistant, together and separate with and through our bodies, with and through parties, protests, potlucks, city council meetings, dance class, open hours at the community bike shop, and more. I remain a co-organizer, with Angela Beallor and Elizabeth Press, of FlagSSS Day in Troy, which entwines celebration and challenge, protest with party, and dissent with a dedication to joy, and organizes parades, rituals, and flag-making workshops. I worked with Troy Bike Rescue for five years as a board member and volunteer focused on youth advocacy and coalition building with other grass roots/hyper-local orgs. I was also part of the team that started Troy’s DIY safer space queer dance party and performance and community fundraiser event, Polly, in 2014. Polly ended in 2019 and had a mind-blowingly beautiful reunion party in March 2024.
I have worked internationally as a teacher and facilitator, performer, and artist. I completed an MFA in Dance from UCLA in 2008 and a practice-based PhD in Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2022. My dissertation focused on friendship and embodied technologies for re-enchantment and recovery from the delusion of separateness. I am rooted in my background in Euro-American contemporary dance, somatic practices, and performance art, Japanese experimental dance practices, Black & queer social dance, and Buddhist thought and practice. I have been meditating and learning Buddhist philosophy since 1998, having studied most extensively in Thai Forest and Burmese lineages. I practiced yoga for about twenty years and taught yoga for a decade, having studied most extensively with Eric Schiffman, Elena Brower, Integral Yoga, and Debra Bluth. I am trained in the Internal Family Systems method and am deeply inspired by the approach and its potential to guide human towards collective liberation with love at the center. I completed my level 1 IFS training in 2015 and received one-on-one counseling from IFS synthesizer Richard Schwartz for over 15 years, which I acknowledge as an immense privilege and the ultimate portal for my understanding of and intimacy with the model. I am also inspired by and trained in Barbara Carrellas’ Urban Tantra work and Bondassage and have studied DREAMWORK with Mala Kline.
Some of my closest collaborators and peer teachers are the artists, healers, and misfits Erica Dawn Lyle, Erin Sickler, Lea Keiffer, Eli Nixon, Dori Midnight, Tomislav Feller, Nikola Knežević, Senem Pirler, margit galanter, Angela Beallor, Elizabeth Press, Sondra Loring, Lailye Weidman, Jason Martin, Ellen Foster, Jack Magai, taisha paggett, Julia Handschuh, Asher Woodworth, Ethan Keirmaier, and Sara Jane Stoner. I am indebted to these comrades and to my teachers Barbara Carrellas, Deborah Hay, Debra Bluth, Ashon Crawley, Jennifer Monson, Simone Forti, d. Sabela grimes, Mala Kline, Richard Schwartz, Thanissara and Kittisaro, and Pascal Auclair, and to teachers and influences I have never met in person including Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Bayo Akomolafe, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Min Tanaka, Paul Preciado, Pauline Oliveros, Silvia Federici, Karen Barad, and many others.
Instagram @hansihaha
Email hjvanderkolk (at) gmail (dot) com