mj hawks

Project statement

K(now)ing is an in-progress project studying mundane acts of intimacy. At the beginning of 2021, around a full year into the Covid-19 pandemic, I started capturing candid photos of strangers displaying closeness in public. I started wondering how we as a human collective can hold and take care of one another, and what it means to show that publicly for all to see. In my mind, the ways we love and care for one another can manifest as a sort of knowledge for that person. Which I think is incredibly intimate; to hold and to know, to be held and be known. For my Capstone this semester, we took these candid images and asked ourselves what ‘holding’ means to us. For some it is a sense of proximity to another human and for others, holding means eventually having to let go. At some point, the project took a turn (like most projects do) from studying knowledge of another to investigating knowledge of oneself- we figured you need both to achieve the real ‘knowing’. The line ‘to be held and be known’ was originally meant as a way to describe what it felt like to be seen by another, but swiftly expanded into how one holds and knows themself. What it is like to truly see yourself. As we inevitably grow as humans, we can take many shapes and forms and identities and still exist in the bodies that we’ve always lived in. The true ‘knowing’ is staying open to learning, to rooting yourself in seeing the person in the now. Perhaps the true knowing is accepting that you indeed do not know? What you see in this video is rehearsal footage of the work in progress after six weeks of rehearsal. There are nine dancers total, working in a contemporary dance vocabulary. I am hesitant of showing what the work looks like in its process stage, but I know that as artists we don’t always get the opportunity to (or even want to) showcase where the work started, where it’s at this moment, and where it’s going. Here’s getting to know one another better.

About the Artist

MJ Hawks grew up in Tennessee, where she trained rigorously for 14 years with her competitive studio and school dance teams. With an emphasis in Contemporary, Hip Hop, Ballet, and Jazz, she became immersed in a world of performance that prioritized precision and unison. She pursued formal education at Columbia College Chicago, focusing on choreography and performance. Through Columbia, she was able to develop her own sense of artistry through the all-encompassing medley of technical, creative, historical, and pedagogical dance courses. Here, she was introduced to Modern, West African, Breaking, and (Contact) Improvisation techniques, which amplified her physical fluency. MJ was particularly interested in the Dance for Camera courses, finding her creation of dance films to be an additional outlet to express her developing vision as an artist. MJ was privileged to study with artists such as T. Ayo Alston, Keesha Beckford, Margi Cole, Paige Cunningham, Jeff Hancock, Carrie Hanson, Daniel “Bravemonk” Haywood, and Darrell Jones, with whom expanded her movement vocabulary and ways of knowing dance. She performed in Margi Cole’s Minding The Gap, a virtual work processed through Columbia’s Repertory Performance Workshop course in Fall 2020. She also performed in numerous student works, including Kierah King’s HA(b*tch)ually, which traveled to the American College Dance Association Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan in Spring 2020. In June 2019, MJ traveled to the Centre De La Danse in France with eleven other Dance Majors for a two-week dance intensive called “Camping”. Here, she recognized a collective desire for community and belonging, which drove her to invest in facilitating a sense of communal connection and well-being in all movement spaces. MJ is currently performing in student works and teaching Ballroom and Latin partner dance at Duet Dance Studio. She plans to continue honing her craft and serving the dance community by amalgamating performance, training, teaching, and making.

connect

Instagram: @mj_hawks

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4gBNGS0Bn5o9ViRIbC9cpw