“There’s a certain joy that comes from dancing together. It’s intimacy that can be shared with anyone as long as there is consent and the commitment to being present and in the moment.”

So begins Ciceley Fullylove’s proposal to ARCOS Presents, the production mentorship program for “emerging-into-self-producing” dance artists. The program serves as a laboratory to prepare artists to be nimble, courageous, and willing to take creative risks by tackling tough ideas in new ways.

Rhythm & Grooves is the performance Fullylove is developing from her accepted proposal, for presentation at the end of September as one half of a double bill. Merging distinct worlds of social dance (house, two-step, salsa, cumbia) with contact improv methods to develop a deeper relationship between partner(s), space, and rhythm, Fullylove asks: “How do we find our authentic grooves?” and “How can we be in unison with each other from within those grooves?” Fullylove’s dance partners will be Venese Alcantar, Irving Maldonado, and Adrian Flores, with frequent collaborator Collin “Oolaf” Finnigan providing the live soundtrack.

Ciceley Fullylove dances joyfully in her work “Groove Collective,” performed in June 2024. Photo by Steve Rogers.

Kelly Goetz’s Menstruator completes the double bill, a solo performance that blends clowny-burlesque, narrative dance, text, and audience interaction inspired by mindfulness exercises. Drawn from Goetz’s relationship with their own mental health, “the rituals that balance me…and how [we] tell the story of our experiences,” the performance centers the hormonal fluctuations associated with the menstrual cycle and confronts our patriarchy’s tenacious taboos around menstruation. The world-confronting instigator is Goetz’s alter ego Merlot, who “traverses the absurdity of trying to logic out or overpower her illusions and emotions.” After self-producing iterations of Menstruator mostly on their own throughout 2023, at sites such as an art gallery, scooter maintenance shop, warehouse, and yoga studio, Goetz is thriving on the support ARCOS Presents offers. They’ve gathered a team of collaborators around them to realize their fuller theatrical vision, including musician Jared Standish and multidisciplinary artist Elisa Noemí as dramaturg.

Kelly Goetz in a 2023 performance from their Menstruator series, which will see a full production as part of ARCOS Presents' double bill. Photo by Brandi Kennedy.

You may have caught these exuberant artists elsewhere around town—Fullylove’s performed with a local dance scene who’s who and sings with the band CAPYAC, and Goetz facilitates mindfulness classes and has performed with Salvage Vanguard Theater in addition self-producing performance art events.  Both artists are making the most of what the ARCOS Presents program provides: financial support for a production budget, technical inventory access, rehearsal and performance space, and creative thought-partnership from production to outreach. ARCOS is delighted to guide the realization of these artists’ deeply personal projects to audiences at CRASHBOX at the end of September, as the ARCOS Presents program has previously for Angelica Monteiro at Motion Media Arts Center in 2023, Michael J. Love and Kaitlyn B. Jones at the Carver Center in 2019, and anxious 20yr olds Gianina Casale, D’Launa Lawson, Oluwaseun Samuel Olayiwola, Lizzette Chapa, and Hunter Sturgis at Museum of Human Achievement in 2017.