A correspondence between choregrapher Allie Hankins and Ballet Russes danseur noble Vaslav Nijinsky.

Appropriating Nijinsky’s obsessive repetition, approach-avoidance, and sexual deviancy, Hankins constructs an amalgamation of herself and the notoriously troubled dancer. As imitation dissolves into disorientation and false memories, Hankins endures with a persistance  unique to bodies in spiritual crises—confronting isolation and desperation in the pursuit of corporeal transcendence.

Against a backdrop of lurid color and gold-bathed muscle, Hankins negotiates the impermanence of identity, and the volatility of solitary retrospection. Embodying movement’s capacity to engender lust, repugnance, confusion, and ultimately elation, Like a Sun inhabits the space between confinement and liberation, reality and fantasy, myth and man.

Allie Hankins is a choreographer, performer, teacher, and researcher. A resident of the Pacific Northwest since 2008, Hankins has presented her works in Seattle, Portland, New York, Minneapolis, Berlin, and Vienna. As a collaborator, Hankins performs as part of Seattle-based dance/sound performance company Salt Horse, with Portland-based choreographer Tahni Holt, and is a member of Portland’s dance center FLOCK.  

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Support for Like a Sun That Pours Forth Light but Never Warmth was provided by a creative residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL, Washington’s Artist Trust, Velocity Dance Center, SCUBA National Touring Network for Dance, Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture Council, and individual donations.