Dirt Stage is a dance practice that has evolved over a period of 5 years, within privacy and friendship, cultivating a quality of "culture" that feeds our private (family) lives, and trying to bring the attention of our dancing selves to the unknown dirt beneath our feet. 
We use sensation-based movement as a method of listening to place -- deep listening that heightens your sense of presence, pleasure, cracking open somatic images that are waiting under your skin.  Dancing in the dirt is grounding, giving you permission to access a wild self and release into the immediacy of experience. We are Portland dancers Mizu Desierto, Tracy Broyles, Kestrel Gates, Rebecca Harrison and Emily Stone.  We originally dug "dirt stages" as part of our Local Culture Project to more fully take our dance practices out of the studio and integrate them into our homes and outdoor spaces.  Inspired by dirt stages on Min Tanaka’s Body Weather Farm, Dirt Stage is an on-going dialogue and homemade dance project between 5 women. It is durational. It is integrative. It is dirty.
Dirt Stage is a square of earth, vegetation removed, soil dug and worked. Dirt Stage is tending to things that nourish our animal appetite. Dirt Stage is a commons. Dirt Stage is kinesthetic delight. Dirt Stage is a re-inhabiting of land and body. Dirt Stage is slow. Dirt Stage is a rich square of fertility, wild and domestic.  Dirt Stage is decay and decomposition.  Dirt Stage is being willing to enter into and deeply inhabit the places that have been neglected. Dirt Stage is an ongoing dialogue. Dirt Stage is somatic. Dirt Stage is an ending, a beginning and a process, all at once. Dirt Stage is 5 women. Dirt Stage is mycelial and microbial. Dirt Stage eats what it sows.