Published Works
Emily keeps conceptual storytelling in the driver’s seat as she pairs every choreographic work with an apparatus or environment that embodies the essence of the individual project. Her multi-disciplinary aerial training, paired with her dance background provides a smorgasbord of opportunities to fill a stage or screen with movement that has been described as organic, angular and sensory. The eternal goal is to strum the viewer’s emotional strings and bring to the surface the experiences that make us human.
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Dependent Variable
Created in 2023 with support from Dance Canvas, Dependent Variable is an aerial dance film that explores how outside forces guide the ebb and flow of relationships. Individual worlds colliding as the result of happenstance combined with choice. Friends finding a path of connection in spite of outward pull, a relationship cut short, a rooted connection that enables true support. All of the relationships being woven together by the pendulous, sine wave-esque movement that results from being suspended by rope and harness.
Support for development provided by Dance Canvas Inc
Choreography, direction, production by Emily Stratton
Music composition by Josh Stratton
Editing by Carl Perkins & ADAYliving
filming by Anna Wiman
Lighting design and tech by Abby Auman
Location provided by Akrosphere Aerial and Circus Arts
Photography by Francois Bergeron-Proulx
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Just To Be Clear
Winner of Inanimate Dance's 48 hour film festival, Inanimate 48, this short aerial dance film uses aerial plastic and water to explore the sensation of exposure.
"Rather than extremes in nature, the elements causing you damage are relentless clocks, watchful neighbors, aching joints, unexpected weather and work. How do you react when your frayed edges are on display? Put on a show? Lash out? Dive inward? Just to be clear, the world may see you, but are they really watching? Embrace the exposure."
Choreography, filming, direction, editing by Emily Stratton
Archipelago
Developed in 2022 during Fidget Feet's "Creation Intensive" and presented at the Irish Aerial Creation Center, Archipelago is an aerial dance performance that explore Ring Trapeze as a metaphor for the importance of reaching for and using support. The deconstructing/reconstructing that this apparatus provides drives home the balance between effort and being held in the battle for mental health.
Ring Trapeze, at its foundational set up, it is 6 rings hung symmetrically, side by side by lengths of cable-core rope. Each set of rings can be connected by a trapeze bar that was designed to be both inserted and removed from the rings while the apparatus is in use. The visual of this configuration has been described as both an “artistic Salmon Ladder” (a la Ninja Warrior) and as a ship anchoring on various islands (hence, Archipelago)
Choreography and apparatus design by Emily Stratton
Filming by Jym Daly
Mentorship by Chantal McCormick, Kat Cooley, Carolina Cabanas and Emma Poole
Apparatus fabrication by Cade Holmseth
Location provided by The Irish Aerial Creation Center
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Culminate
Presented at Center Stage Santa Barbara's RE:Emerge dance festival in June 2021, this aerial dance piece was put to film in the beautiful Plains Art Museum in Fargo ND. A compilation of choreography composed during times of despair, this piece aims to capture the deep emotional and physical exhaustion we all worked through as we entered back into the world after lockdown.
Choreography/performance by Emily Stratton
Filming by Nick Deraney
Location provided by The Plains Art Museum with special thanks to Sandy Thompson
Music is Etude No.16 by Philip Glass