University of Oregon Associate Professor of Dance Shannon Mockli makes sure to engage her body on a daily basis, taking time to reflect and appreciate nature.
“Walking offers me wonderful reflection time where I contemplate just about everything from teaching to art to finding more balance and happiness in my life,” she says.
This has helped her achieve her goals, one of which was making tenure at UO, and the continued goal of being able to participate rigorously in a career she loves.
She finds happiness “in setting goals and accomplishing them, in my creative process, in making deep and honest connections with others, in allowing myself the time to be present and to indulge every now and then, in dancing, in being unabashedly myself and feeling safe, and offering that same space for others.”
Shannon helps offer this safe space to dance through her collaboration and dancing during Bach in Motion, our July 5 event with DanceAbility International. Shannon is a DanceAbility-trained teacher.
Jumping In
Her position as an Associate Professor in Dance allows Shannon to engage in her field at a high level in all arenas, theory, pedagogy, performance and training, creative process, and project directorship.
She brought this approach to a recent project titled “In the Water”, a collaboration with musician Markus Johnson who assisted in creating a sound score that included collaged sections of voice over from podcasts that inspired Shannon. Both podcasts were stories about preparing for having a very difficult conversation. This experience/topic resonated with Shannon on many levels, as a woman within the #metoo movement, and as a person who also struggles with confrontation. She used these narratives and the potent melodies and rhythms Markus’ music offered to explore a quartet of three women and one man how they allow themselves to be vulnerable with one another, how they “confront” one another, how they confront themselves, and how they confront the audience.
“The result was a fairly exhaustive piece full of meaningful subtleties and risky dancing that I can’t wait to explore again in the future,” Shannon says.
Shannon’s life experiences entirely shape her art.
“I draw upon my reflections about the world and on my experiences as a student working hard to rise to challenges, with heart surgeries that have challenged my physical capabilities, on relationships come and gone, on memories of loss, on insecurities about social interactions, on fears, desires and hopes. I try to universalize my experience to speak to a broader audience. Ultimately, my work has been a reflection on being human,” she says.
In addition to Bach in Motion, she is implementing a new course on screendance and designing it online. She also is working on a “pregnancy” project, recently settling into her second trimester.
Future Of Dance
Shannon believes we need to continue finding relevance and connection to our audiences for all performance art.
Though she’s not always in it for the “stage moment”, it offers closure and witness to a creative process that seeks to elicit fierce dancing, risk-taking, and vulnerability.
“I do want my art to communicate, that is why I create it, but I have never found an all-encompassing solution to my nerves and so that often takes away something that I experience in the process of creating that can’t be recovered,” she says.
However, Shannon hopes people remember that her work was sincere, fully explored, immersive, and able to meaningfully connect with others’ experiences.
To learn more about Shannon Mockli, visit her University of Oregon page.
Definitely grab tickets to see Bach in Motion live on July 5.
Learn more about all of our exciting events for this year’s Oregon Bach Festival.