Dane Hess

Artist Statement

My artistic practice centers grief as a living, moving relationship rather than a problem to be solved. I work primarily through poetry and dance, allowing language and the body to speak to one another as co-witnesses. In this piece, my recorded poetry plays as audio while I dance to my own voice—blurring the roles of speaker, listener, mover, and mourner.
Poetry holds what the mind can name; dance carries what remains unspeakable. By letting my body respond to my words in real time, I explore grief as something cyclical, physical, and ongoing—felt in breath, muscle memory, rhythm, and pause. The movement is not illustrative but relational: sometimes resisting the text, sometimes surrendering to it, sometimes arriving late.
I have been studying dance for the past three years, deepening my attention to somatic listening, improvisation, and presence. This practice allows grief to be metabolized through motion rather than fixed into narrative. The work invites viewers to witness mourning not as stillness or collapse, but as aliveness—an ongoing conversation between loss, love, and the body that remembers.