Imagined Species (working title) is a new solo performance work in development by the choreographer Laura Hicks. Exploring the spaces between animal and human, sex and gender, Imagined Species is an effort to embody difference and becoming as a force of creative transformation through a reinterpretation of Darwin's sexual selection and the androcentrism inherent in evolutionary theory.
Laura Hicks is a Canadian-born choreographer based in Frankfurt, Germany. She creates works that structure improvisation through movement qualities and encounters. She questions bodily states, affects, and intentions, drawing inspiration from incongruity, relationship, vitality, and multiple layers of meaning and humor. Her work is contextualized by contemporary dance and theater practices with a minimalist, conceptual aesthetic but strong physicality. The work often includes the use of voice. She creates solo works as well as group pieces.
From 2015- 2019 she produced collaboratively under the names "Hicks&Buehler" and "Hicks and Reynolds", and since 2020 her work has been produced under the name Laura Hicks Projects. From 2020- 2022, Hicks premiered three new choreographic works, participated in two funded research residencies, re-performed Der Klumpen, and toured Making Impressions and Other Failures to Marburg, Bonn, and Croatia.
Currently, Laura Hicks Projects is producing four full-length choreographic works available for guest performances: The Lump, Making Impressions..., Third Space, and Gut Symmetries.
Thematically, Laura Hicks' choreographic work is driven by questions dealing with kinesthesia, emotional states, and affect or relationship with others. Her work is unique in its use of the improvisational skills of the performers and their ability to fill in specific movement qualities that fit or influence the works in very different ways. Movement states are determined by how they relate to other performers or the themes of the work.
Many of Laura Hicks' works have all-female or nearly all-female performers and portray female performers in androgynous roles that demonstrate physical strength, endurance, and honesty while subtly drawing from current socio-political issues.
