Hugely Amplified Present (working title)
Hugely Amplified Present (working title)
Dayna Hanson
Dayna Hanson
Hugely Amplified Present is a time-based unspooling of live dance, performance, and film. This rigorously analog ensemble work features Heather Kravas, Jim Fletcher, Julia Sloane, and Jim Kent, with guest artists appearing on film. The work comprises three intersecting parts: “The Install” is drawn from the experience of three professional art handlers hanging a large, unwieldy, and highly valuable piece of art for a blue-chip client. Interviews with art handlers and filmed reenactments of their work—performed without props—become source material for three actors, whose learned adaptations appear in a short film with live elements. Themes of this section include class, labor, and the tension between individual and cooperative thinking.
“Kit Maxey” is an abstract dance consisting of solos and duets performed by Julia Sloane and Heather Kravas. This section draws inspiration from the arm movements of a two-week-old baby, archival choreography created by Hanson in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the traditional icon of a winged hourglass, representing the Latin phrase tempus fugit (time escapes), which informs intricate traveling footwork along X-Y axes. Themes include ephemerality, life stages, and nostalgia.
At the center of the third part, “28 problems,” is a choreographic rendering of a page of handwritten calculus problems—an artifact from a brief moment shared between Hanson’s sons in 2013. Originally developed from 2015 to 2019 and then paused, the work included a 30-minute unison duet, performed archival Hanson family material, the choreographed handling and hanging of found portraits of children, and Dave Mason’s 1972 song “We Just Disagree.” Thematically, this part shares ephemerality and life stages with Kit Maxey, as well as the desire to remove the sting or harm from disagreement. Within Hugely Amplified Present, the essential elements of 28 problems shake loose from their earlier structure and reconstitute in relation to the other sections.
All three sections share measurement, precision, and the use of X–Y axes, along with the notion—explored by Nathalie Sarraute in her 1939 work Tropisms—that invisible stirrings within the human interior motivate outward expression and behavior. The ways these parts intersect will emerge through iterative experimentation, mostly in residency settings.
Dance, Multimedia Performance, Performing Arts
2026
About Dayna Hanson
Seattle, WA
Dayna Hanson is a Guggenheim fellow, a MacDowell fellow and a United States Artists Foundation fellow whose body of work spans more than four decades and multiple disciplines. Hanson’s dance/narrative episode of HBO’s Room 104, “Voyeurs,” starring Sarah Hay, was named among the best television of 2017 by The New York Times and Vox. Her dance and performance work, often drawing from contemporary American culture and personal/family history, has been presented by On the Boards, REDCAT, Noorderzon Festival, Fusebox Festival and others. Dayna’s narrative and experimental films have screened at South by Southwest, Woodstock Film Festival, New York Film Festival and many more. With Gaelen Hanson, Dayna co-directed internationally touring dance theater company 33 Fainting Spells, which produced six live works, several short films and a dance film festival, New Dance Cinema, between 1994 and 2006. A self-trained choreographer, Dayna holds a B.A in English literature from the University of Washington, where she received the Milliman Prize for short fiction. Dayna is co-founder and Executive Director of Base, a nonprofit dance and performance space in Seattle.
Dayna Hanson is a Guggenheim fellow, a MacDowell fellow and a United States Artists Foundation fellow whose body of work spans more than four decades and multiple disciplines. Hanson’s dance/narrative episode of HBO’s Room 104, “Voyeurs,” starring Sarah Hay, was named among the best television of 2017 by The New York Times and Vox. Her dance and performance work, often drawing from contemporary American culture and personal/family history, has been presented by On the Boards, REDCAT, Noorderzon Festival, Fusebox Festival and others. Dayna’s narrative and experimental films have screened at South by Southwest, Woodstock Film Festival, New York Film Festival and many more. With Gaelen Hanson, Dayna co-directed internationally touring dance theater company 33 Fainting Spells, which produced six live works, several short films and a dance film festival, New Dance Cinema, between 1994 and 2006. A self-trained choreographer, Dayna holds a B.A in English literature from the University of Washington, where she received the Milliman Prize for short fiction. Dayna is co-founder and Executive Director of Base, a nonprofit dance and performance space in Seattle.