Worn

WORN is a contemporary dance work that explores the layered dynamics of intimacy, trust, and reclamation through the symbolic use of a shirt. The shirt becomes both a second skin and a boundary, something that comforts, protects, and constrains. Through tactile, visceral movement, dancers navigate the shifting tension between holding on and letting go, between care and control.

The work unfolds in three phases: the comfort of closeness, the disruption of tension, and the act of release. The gesture of removing or manipulating the shirt becomes a metaphor for resistance, autonomy, and transformation. Rooted in DeRose's experience living in an abusive relationship, WORN is not a literal retelling but an embodied investigation of how emotional memory and trauma live in the body. It asks: How do we learn to trust again? How do we reclaim softness after harm? The intent is to create a space where tenderness and resistance coexist where the act of dancing becomes an act of reclamation, and where the audience witnesses the body as both archive and instrument of care.

WORN was most recently in development through the MAI mentorship program and was awarded a Canada Council grant for continued research in a month-long residency in Yellowknife. The work was also presented at the Art in the Open Festival in Charlottetown, PEI, this past summer.

Photos by Rithy Lord-Nhes