And how can we, you knowing your audience better than I do, your dancers better than I do, How do we come together to like really make this thing happen? And I've been feeling that since day one.

I never want to be like a helicopter director.

You know, I feel like I bring, first of all, like, you know, the expectation is set in the room for the dancers in terms of like how we approach our work, right? And, you know, what curb and mics and whatever, you know, that thing is.

It's really about the experience, you know what I mean? And like them just kind of diving headfirst into, you know, whatever it is that, you know, it's going to whatever it is that I bring to them.

Yeah.

So for me as a as a director, like when I see the thing and I see how everything's kind of like.

landing, like, that's when I go up and I offer just perspective, right? Like, this is not like, I need you to change something.

mean,

Watching the dancers in the room for the past week and a half or so, are there things that are being revealed about how they're approaching this work specific to karate that is maybe surprising or unaligned with what you thought?

I mean, they're actually in alignment with what I thought.

I'm always conscious of many things when I curate.

One, just like, you know, what the work is, where these people are in their careers and all of that.

Can I see my dancers? Can I see the ensemble actually taking the thing on? and also, like, what is it gonna say to an audience? Or, like, what, you know, thinking about programming and the flow of an evening and how these works develop.

Literally picked karate because there's something very classic about what she does, you know what I mean? When she sent her reel, I was like, you know, there's a spectrum of ability here.

But like, what really stood out for me was like, there are works where these kinds of formations and things like she's building for us kind of existed in that space.

I think I even referenced Graham, too, because I was like, this one.