While a student at Bard College, Abby Bender took Limón technique from Lenore Latimer. She gave a frank observation of Bender’s performance quality that now informs her career as a choreographer of humorous work.
“She wrote: ‘You have what Martha Graham called divine awkwardness.’ And that completely changed my life,” Bender says. “I was kind of a late bloomer, and I’ve never been a technically proficient dancer, but I was a natural performer. To hear it put that way was great. I said, ‘I’m going to embrace awkwardness!’ That fits into the work I make, which is extremely comic.”
Bender performs as part of the The Yard’s FOLLIES: Women Dance the Comic series at Martha’s Vineyard, tonight and tomorrow evening.
Photos courtesy of Bender