I knew that I needed to start loving myself more. When I recognized myself holding onto things I could not even identify. I started to dance as an escape. From time, the outside world, people, relationships, the choices I have made. I started when I knew that I wanted to know myself better, take care of myself better, see myself better. I wanted to know my body; I wanted to know how and why I thought about certain things. I was at a loss on how to get where I wanted to go, not knowing where I wanted to go, but knowing not here, whatever that meant. I wanted to be who I knew resided deep down inside myself, yet unknown to me. I knew that I was somehow being dishonest to myself and therefore the whole external world, but not knowing how, where, in what form, or for what reason. I mean, I don’t lie. I value truth above all. I always wanted the best for myself and for everyone I crossed paths, however, I also knew that somehow, this sentiment was not free. In my pursuit (of connection and goodwill), there where underlying energies that held me back, making me feel stuck, thwarted, unclear, misguided, or like I was missing something. No matter how much I loved, I wasn’t able to show up in those relationships as I deep-down wanted to. The whole picture did not feel real, feel true to me. Like something was missing. Like I was blind to something. Like I could not say what I really wanted to say. Like I was afraid of what I really wanted to say. I had bottled up things. Things without name, things without source, things collected over days, years, my lifetime. And I didn’t know what they were, but I knew that they were holding me back in some way. From what? I wasn’t sure. But I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. For some reason, one night, and then it became many, I closed the blinds, I set the lights low, and the song I was listening to, I surrendered to. I did not want to think about the thoughts in my head. I did not want to go anywhere or see anybody. Not like how I was, how stuck I was feeling.

I gave up.  And just stood alone and listened to the music, deeply. With my mind turned off, and concentration turned fully to the music, my body started to move. It began to rise and fall, it bent with the pause, each note, each key moved my body differently. It felt good to “do something.” Not just sit around and think, feel bad about myself, smoke, drink, search for entertainment, or distraction. I gave myself, myself. To be alone in a space flooded with music and allowed my body to breathe to it. Giving my body a life of its own. Without my thoughts and ideas getting in the way of it. I returned to this exercise because I enjoyed it and I also became amazed at what my body could do. I started to recognize that my body would move to the truth of the song. My body started to show me how my sadness moved, how my pain moved, how my love in all its various forms moved, how my excitement moved, how my desire moved – me.

My body taught me how it responds to stimulus in the environment. It took time before I started to see patterns. I noticed when I felt nervous inside, with fresh frustrations, I would move jerky. Shakey in a way. Fast and erratic shakes. When I felt sexual desire, I’d go up on my toes for some reason. When I felt that someone wronged me, and deep down I would have wanted to flush this person down the toilet, or beat the shit out of them, I would kick, punch, get the workout that would have transpired had I had the guts to really tear these people in half. And then when the battle was finished, in my dance I found that I would hold a deep plie and move my upper body in all sorts of configurations. Showing me the strength I did possess, the range of movement I am capable, and the various perspectives I was able to take while feeling grounded, stable, and secure. I came in touch with the power I did have at the present moment, the power in my own thighs, my own calves. These legs I presumably nourish and fuel each time I eat something, and rest while sleeping, and inevitably train when I walk the staircase home. My body started to show me the way. The way and the places I hold emotions, thoughts, feelings – as they are evoked by the song. I became a puppet to the musician’s work. I started to dance their song, their emotion. And what I realized is that while my body connected to their vision, I started to learn slowly my own. I started to get in touch with how my body responds to certain moods, vibrations, energies, as present in all music. And I started to see how items from my own experiences started to present themselves, from seemingly out of nowhere. It’s like watching a film, or hearing another person’s story…  we are reminded almost automatically of something that is particular to ourselves. The only new element was that it wasn’t all intellectual, it wasn’t happening through the brain and thought. But rather the awareness was getting shown to me through my body, through the vessel that carries our soul through the world. When I started to see the patterns of sentiment in music felt through my body, I started to become conscious of what my thoughts were in relation to how my body was moving. And then this awareness started to show up outside the dance practice. I started to recognize very quickly when I was feeling anger, love, excitement, in life and in relation to what, because I knew better how to identify bodily responses to internal thoughts and feelings and external promptings. And I started to use this knowledge to guide me better through the 3d. I uncovered a lot of feelings that were stored away. Stored in my body. In my sessions, prompted by music, I experienced the range of emotion found in music. I connected my own feelings of struggle, hardship, frustration against the system, to others’ experience of such. I danced their song and found my own story. Each person’s journey is entirely their own, yet there are universal emotions that are true to all, carried out in their own contexts, cultural backdrops, familial systems, and climate of expectations. I’m not from the ghetto and I will never in this lifetime know what it would be like to grow up in the ghetto. But the feelings of marginalization, fighting for survival, and the need and want to have a sense of identity amidst a social structure of ride or die does resonate, and maybe for us all, wherever we may have been raised. These are thoughts, feelings, and emotions true for everyone.

Movement History

I have enjoyed physical activity and body work since I was a child; gravitating again and again to different dance forms including tap, jazz, salsa, belly, tango, flamenco, and hip-hop, a regular practice of yoga for over twenty years, the bicycle as primary means of transport, study in the art of Taekwondo, as well as a variety of sports.

My fascination with space was cultivated in my young years, as I explored and sat witness to the play of light and shadow on the internal surfaces of the old Victorian home I grew up in. I remember being lost in imaginative thoughts often triggered by things and phenomena in the real-world, like temperature, sound, echo and draftiness. I believe it was this childhood reverence for space and the continuous play of changing variables within space, affecting space, that led me to study architecture. I explored this fascination in a tangible way and dived into studio projects. Architecture for me was a material exercise for sculpting human experience. It carved human passage for the body, complete with all their senses. Each project was an exploration in how material and space could be creatively organized, within an environmental context for evoking mental, physical, and/or emotional responses from its human occupant. The spaces I aimed to create in my architectural projects had qualities of intrigue or of calmness.

Architecture is a harmonization, a working, poetic configuration of parts.

The TI+TU movement emerged into existence, as pieces of myself came together in a dynamic configuration. It describes not a building, but rather the human experience as a gestalt form, of matter, feeling, thought, intellect, expression, and agency, acting in, and acted upon by, qualities of the surrounding environment.

TI+TU is an architecture for personal harmonization.

Driving everything is curiosity, desire to explore, sense new things, learn new things, have new experiences, —- all very much supported by my intense interest — to simply sit-back and observe (with all senses).  

I have travelled to over 35 countries, journeying primarily alone. It is a phenomenal interest and pleasure to observe (and participate) in alternative patterns, to alternative rhythms. I have learned a lot about myself, about others, about identity, history, culture, language, and space in my travelling. 

EDUCATION

Masters in Architecture, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture, Parsons School of Design, New School University, NY, NY

PROFESSIONAL

Design architect for residential and commercial projects (New York City, USA)

Communications manager and marketing expert for EU-funded projects in the realm of extra-terrestrial Space Exploration and Human Habitation (Vienna, Austria).