Research: Sonya Tayeh

Sonya Tayeh is a dance teacher and jazz and contemporary choreographer from Detroit, Michigan best known for being a choreographer on the television series So You Think You Can Dance. I have always been a great fan of SYTYCD and that is where I found out about Tayeh. Her work feels so genuine and from a real place, most of the times she tend to take a dark approach to emotions. But she seems to always push the dancers to emote something so real, I always feel a true stroy when watch any of her choreographies.

This routine literally gives me goosebumps every time. I love it how the dance is so soft, vounerable and broken at the same time. Overall It just felt like physical poetry. I liked the way Nigel Lithgoe talked about the architecture of dance and the poetry of it being melded together in this piece. In 1.22 the extension of the side arabesque and the little break of the shape mid movement and since it seems to come from the core of the body it gave it this exuding emotion of pain. The feet breaking the lines of the legs as opposed to classical ballet extensions that look so graceful, in this routine give it a more expressive feel.

Another routine that I really like by Tayeh is pop drop and roll. It was fun and playful routine themed as geisha dolls, the exaggerated grace to point where it seems almost clumsy, the little bobble head movement in the end, the posy popping moves, straight posture, necks extended to infinity. Just in general a really cool  fun and quirky routine