On a warm afternoon in North Portland, I sat down over a cup of tea with Tahni Holt, choreographer, Alexander Technique practitioner, and movement artist, to chat about her dance practices and discuss her artistic career. 

“The more you hold on, the tighter it gets,” Holt said as we sat in her living room, her eyes bright with excitement as she talked about anchoring to choreographic theories. 

Holt, a decades-long choreographer and educator, is perhaps best-known by many for founding the arts incubator FLOCK Dance Center, a dance and performance space that presents the works of member artists and offers affordable rental space.

Her solo and group works have been performed across the country, including in the Pacific Northwest through Seattle’s On the Boards, Portland’s White Bird Dance, and others. She was a 2014-2015 Touring Award recipient and resident artist with Romanian choreographer Madalina Dan, has created works for PICA’s TBA festival multiple times, and received a Foundation for the Arts grant in 2018.

“I’m so into that conversation in the choreographic room,” she continued. “How do we keep this thing super alive for everybody? And what does ‘alive’ mean, and how do you own the space in a particular way? Are we, as a dance ecosystem, a closed system? Are we an open system? How open is the system?”

Finding her love of movement as a child growing up in 1990s Portland, Holt attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts dance program before returning home to Oregon to further develop her career. From Bulgaria to Kansas, she has found success in her somatically driven approach, stressing the knowledge of the body in synergy with the mind, and her experientially oriented productions.

Her work is meditative while remaining full of life; exciting and unexpected, while inviting viewers to tune in deeply to their inner lives. Holt showcases pieces that ask the audience to feel without becoming too involved in the perception of their emotions, and hopes that they will understand the driving force behind each dance without being led along the way.

“In my work now, I really care about getting everybody in the room together,” Holt commented. “Performance space is really sacred to me, and I don’t mean sacred in the sense that it’s careful or to be put on a pedestal. I mean, we are all breathing in together, and there’s something about the attention that is asked of in relation to a performance that can be very layered. We’re in a war of attention, and this space is one of the final spaces where we’re all witnessing this thing together. It feels really contrary to the world we’re living in at this moment.”

Holt also strongly believes in the investigation of nonlinear space. Rather than concocting a pointed story, she hopes to develop a landscape in which there is room for glimpses of everyone’s stories, and to create value for the audience through an abundance of opportunity. This, in part, is how she hopes to foster a great sense of community in a world of artists who stay with their craft out of love.

Along with regular classes and FLOCK’s critical engagement series, which “brings together audiences and choreographers to engage with the mystery surrounding the perceived illegibility of dance,” Holt promises two pieces in the works slated for late 2025. One will be with Kansas- and Detroit-based choreographer Shannon Stewart, and one with Portland-area dance artist Emma Lutz Higgins, who recently showcased her debut full-length work at Performance Works Northwest.

“Shannon and I are two choreographers at the same time in our lives in different conditions, and we’re really collaborating and bringing in resources together,” Holt said. “It’s going to be exciting to see what arises.”

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Read my full interview with Tahni Holt below. Answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

ArtsWatch: How and when did you first begin making dance?

Holt: I’ve always made dance, if we define dance as bodies moving in space and time. I loved dancing when I was younger, and I didn’t really do any formal training around it [until] a bit later. I took my first creative movement class when I was five (I grew like a tree — the most profound dance experience one can have, really), and then I really started taking more classes when I was 10. I have memories of my mom’s amazing hair stylist, Dave, in Portland, who had this salon that was all hardwood floors. He was so cool. And they would put music on for me so I could just dance around while my mom was getting her badass eighties short hair cut, and pretend I was an ice skater.

My dad was a teacher at Metropolitan Learning Center in Portland, and I remember going to teacher parties, and my mom’s friends would gather around and encourage me to dance, or they would copy my dancing when I was really little. So I got all this lovely feedback and sense of freedom from my adult community.

Later on, I studied at American Dance Theater in their school under Chisao Hata, Bobby Fouther, Kevin Poe, and Elizabeth Abts, and then later with Melissa St. Claire and Tracy Durbin. There are many others, but those were my main teachers. I didn’t have artists in my family but I did have an amazing art teacher at MLC, Betty Mayther. She would wear these long flowing dresses and big beautiful stone necklaces. My mom worked in an office and she always wore pantyhose as part of her office uniform. I remember early on realizing that I was never going to be able to work in an office because I couldn’t stand pantyhose. Through my seven-year-old eyes, those big tent dresses seemed like there was more movement possibility, even if it wasn’t quite my style. 

I didn’t understand that I could be a dance artist, that it was something people were able to do in the world, until I was a junior in high school. It wasn’t really until my senior year that I realized there were dance programs in college that I could try and audition for. So that changed the trajectory of my life. I got to go to college for dance in New York City at Tisch, and my mind was completely blown.

You also have ties with Seattle, right?

I have ties to Seattle throughout my life as a choreographer. When I came back to Portland, I would start to apply for things up there as well, especially when PICA was an early advocate of my work, so there’s just this kind of network. And I was also befriending people there, because we were communities trying to figure it out. FLOCK began in that vein as well. I’ve always been scrappy and a bit underground and DIY. It really stems from growing up in Portland in the ‘90s and the kind of riot girlhood of the working-class Portland that I resided in. You had to be resourceful and lean on your connections in different ways, which is why I stayed in Portland.

I was coming back to Portland to launch into a bigger city, because I actually really enjoyed my time in bigger cities. I just knew that New York was not my place for the long haul, and I felt like I needed room to fail. I was feeling like I had to succeed every time I got an opportunity, or else I wouldn’t be able to get an opportunity again, so I left to figure out my way of working, which is figuring out what doesn’t work … sometimes that means that my pieces fail on certain levels. When I arrived, Conduit Dance was just starting, and along with others at that time, Mary Oslund and Linda K. Johnson were point people for me, asking, “What do you want? You want space? Okay, great. Here it is. How much can you afford to pay? No problem.”

I also need to feel that I have friendships and community, wherever I am; it’s not always just the work for work’s sake. It’s actually never been the dance, or “whatever it takes to make that dance”; what also matters to me is the container that the dance sits in —  the feel and texture of it, the impact, and who is in the community.

When did you know you wanted to open FLOCK?

FLOCK is the third space that I have been a part of. FLOCK opened in 2014 when my daughter was two. I was at a point where I felt that calling and needed a space again that was consistent and wasn’t wrapped around projects … similarly to how visual artists have their studios they go to even when they don’t have commissioned work. 

As a new parent, I just needed to be nimble and able to make decisions quickly, without involving a whole community of people. And that nimbleness allowed me to be helpful and useful for the other artists involved. And I didn’t want to be in a situation where the admin took over my artistic life.

I have no interest in being alone; I’ve always been interested in creating opportunity for others and myself simultaneously. My overarching dance project is one of community and collaboration, and I am always striving to figure out where there is more resource, of and for dance. It’s no fun being somewhere where there’s no one else around you. I really need the feedback of ideas and the shared experiences. This is true inside my movement, too. If I look back at my dance life in the early years in my choreographic world, I’m throwing myself on the ground and slamming into things and rubbing up against the walls. I’m always touching other people. In my neurodivergent body, I really need the feedback that touch provides.

So FLOCK opened because I wanted to offer people what I also needed, which was really cheap, consistent rehearsal space. When it came time to move out of the current Oregon Contemporary building during the pandemic, FLOCK had transitioned to a five-person-at-the-helm stewardship — Allie Hankins, Muffie Delgado Connelly, Lyra Butler-Denman, and Tracy Broyles. Ken Unkeles, a property owner and developer who just recently retired, is a benefactor to artists in Portland; and Dana Lynn Lewis, a visual artist, who I’ve known for a very long time, invited us to see if there was an opportunity to be in this big, beautiful Building Five space that they were just starting to renovate. 

And so the new space was built out especially for FLOCK, with the amazing support of the team that came with creating Building Five; Cassandra Scholte, at the time, Arts Concierge of the City of Portland; Rhiza Architecture and Design; Dana; and Ken. It was a dream team, and really is the only reason FLOCK Dance Center exists today. 

What are your hopes for the future of FLOCK?

Space and time are always needed for prices that are as cheap as they possibly can be inside of the conditions, so we hope to provide some of that.

The critical engagement series wants to go bigger again. It used to happen a lot in the old space, and despite funding crashing around the art world in general, we feel that it’s coming. There is a sense of, what we have to offer is space. And sometimes we get to buoy that with paying artists, too.

We want to stay in relation to what’s happening and be able to respond to the conditions and respond in a way that is for inclusion and pro-artist. 

We want to continue our fully subsidized space residency for movement artists who identify as low-income and who also exist at the intersection of one or more of the following communities: Black, Indigenous, People of Color, Disabled, Immigrant, Trans, Elder, Low Income, Fat, and Parent/Caregivers.

Because of how small we are, and we volunteer our time, we are also very considerate of what we actually can do there for the long run without burnout. It is a special crew of people that keeps FLOCK in motion.

What type of work do you most enjoy seeing?

I love seeing all different types of work, especially these days as a parent. There’s this thing that happens where there’s a shiny light that goes towards tending to this human being, and consistency is a really big part of that light. Having my daughter has so radically changed my way of moving in the community and what I get to go out and see.

So I love seeing all sorts of work, and truly, watching people move their bodies. Feeling the gall it takes at this moment in the world …  the bravery that it takes to dance and move one’s body is amazing. I just feel into that bravery. And, of course, I have works that speak more directly to the threads within my own making, but I can go to almost anything and just find the pleasure in witnessing and being around other people in that space where we’re all sensing it. I am especially drawn to work that transmits curiosity and tries to be in the world at this moment, and which asks me, as an audience member, to hone my attention in a collective experience. 

You’ve said that your work is very visual. Are there visual elements that you keep returning to?

It’s true, and I think I learned how to call it “visual” because of cinema being visual — vision is another sensory organ. Many times, I try to grab moments because I actually see them as images, and creating work can feel like pulling from visions and spell-casting. Images will pop in, and it feels like a movie scape. In that way, the visual aspect of my work attends to more than just the dancers’ internal landscape, but also how what they’re experiencing reads to an audience. And I don’t just mean through the eyes, but also the transmissions that are communicated.

I tend to like working with objects that are visually appealing and juxtapose something … how the light creates a shadow on the wall. To me, those moments are just sublime.

So how would you describe your choreographic process? Do you have a set practice, or does it vary?

There is this constant feedback that I’m looking for, that I need in my life.  It’s like having something to push up against and rebounding, or maybe from. And there’s something about that which can change my work in a really surprising and pleasurable way.

I am always curious about the things I need to anchor to, so that other things can be unmoored. And I think that that’s true in the work I offer, too. I’m always curious about what allows someone to be in the mystery. What is it that allows someone to be in that liminal space where they don’t get to know something? That charged space of not knowing is where real transformation shows up.

It also means that we ask the question, What do people need to be anchored to? Because we actually need to have a tether. I have found, for myself, I need a tether to be able to un-anchor something else. And I work inside of choreographic framework like that. I’m always curious about what I’m seeing, feeling, sensing, and how it translates to the outside experience of someone else. Inside of a choreographic process that translated to: Let’s try this.  Let’s witness each other doing this — working with these elements, working with these ideas.

If there’s another person in the room with me, we’re going to highlight what variables we’re working with, and then I’m going to witness and see what I’m receiving. And then we’re going to fine-tune it, talk about it, and rearrange it. In this way, we’re doing deep transmission work. There’s something about the choreographic process in transmission, like the way I learn, is through transmission. Some people are highly visual, or have a variety of ways of learning. For me, it’s not actually kinesthetic. It’s through embodiment of information. 

The process can be two or even three years long sometimes. So when I’m working with other people, they have to be pretty committed. When I’m working with myself, I still find the feedback I bring in. I’m also so curious how things can slip from one idea or one image, or one set of properties, or way of organizing. And that slippage is the ability to be porous enough that you don’t have to anchor to a specific idea because the world we live in is not fixed; it is unstable and we are in constant motion. 

For me, making work is always around the conditions of what’s happening. And that means I have to live inside conditions that aren’t always represented by the truth in our field of scarcity. I have to really defy that condition inside of myself to do the work I do. I have to tether to the experience of abundance — in our field, there might not be abundance in money … we know there’s not abundance in money … but there’s abundance in relationships. I tether to that. I can feel into the connective tissue of these relationships, and this is what makes it possible to show up and believe in the work.

That’s beautiful. I feel like I really relate to what you’re talking about. And community is such a big topic, because if one struggles in feeling alone, it’s easy to get to a point where we wonder, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What’s happening? Am I an island?”

And the idea of “island” is part of the scarcity — part of the trap of scarcity and the trap of our political system. It’s the trap of capitalism. I use collaboration incredibly generously in the field and in some ways, the conditions of the field kind of ask me not to. When it comes to grants and funding, it often forces artists to claim “the work I do is mine.” It forces me to establish my real estate as what my ideas are. And that is really false. That’s not the way ideas spread and work. That’s a condition of capitalism and colonial capitalism.

So for me, there’s an entanglement that’s happening. Art and process and community and space. Collaboration is part of that entanglement, too.

You got into Alexander Technique to help heal a neck injury and have continued with it. How has it impacted your life and practice, and how does it relate to your other work?

Alexander affects everything I am interested in, and vice versa. All of my dance and improv training affects my practice of the Alexander Technique. One thing that has become clearer to me through this, along with my other deep practices, is what presence means. The Alexander Technique has to do with sensitizing to sensation and being able to access the differentiation between one moment and another.

I feel like that is called upon so much in my choreographic structures, and also as a performer. The Alexander Technique, along with so many other somatic modalities, allows me to have a really deep, continual, lifelong practice. It’s not like you get to a point and you’ve arrived. There are always more ways of sensitizing and recognizing when a sense of overwhelm, for example, might come in. When I’m in a trauma response, or when I’m overwhelmed, because we live in a world that really asks us to consume so much information coming at once, sensitivity practices can also be useful for our individual bodies. 

I’ve always been drawn to somatics as a dancer. It’s a place where my internal landscape has always been extremely curious, and The Alexander Technique feels like a deeper dive into somatics. It involves connecting with another person in an Alexander practice, and connecting in that space with a whole room of people in my classes.

Is there anything else that you want readers to know?

I teach two different classes, It’s a Fucking Miracle with musician Luke Wyland on Tuesday nights; and EARTH/SKY, which occasionally features guest musicians. It’s been really exciting. There’s so much momentum for the classes right now, and it’s become quite a community. So I’d like to remind people that there’s a movement community waiting for you.