Psychic Predator

Overview

My rules for making art: Have an idea. Doubt it. Fear it. Make something. Cry. Repeat. Psychic Predator is a solo, interactive, improvised dance performance for five audience members that embodies the internalized voice that stops or suppresses our creativity. Come help me turn the prey into the predator.

Psychic Predator is a term coined and explored by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her seminal work, “Women Who Run With Wolves.” She teaches us that the “psychic predator” is an internalized dark force that suppresses our instincts and creativity. What does the “psychic predator” or the shadowy internalization of the “inner critic” look like for you? What do you do to overcome, skirt around, or ward off your psychic predator? Audiences are invited to write down words about their inner critics, to apply colors to the predator’s costume, and to create spaces of rest, creativity, and comfort while witnessing the predator’s dance. Together, through small acts of creation, we will empower our instincts and creativity to ward off the psychic predator.

About the Artist

Kalila Kingsford Smith builds interactive dance environments that are responsive to the characteristics of the performance space: whether a theater, a nature trail, a museum, a city street, or a Zoom call. Fundamentally, she believes that dance is healing and transformative and invites performers and audiences to investigate themselves as participants in the art-making process. Informed by her training in modern and contemporary dance, her movement flows between tension and release, momentum and suspension, improvisation and composition, and storytelling and abstraction. Her current improvisational practice invites participants to access their inner “creature,” the parts of themselves that are pre-thinking, animalistic, and responsive.

Creative Consultant: Megan Quinn
Megan Quinn (she/they) is a dance artist, movement educator, and arts administrator based in Philadelphia. In a world that invites us to move past the signals of our body, Megan facilitates space to honor bodily wisdom. Taking a poetic and therapeutic approach to movement science and exploration, she builds curriculum for individuals and communities to explore what it means to be in embodied connection. Her training and certifications include an undergraduate degree in dance, a master’s degree in Transformative Leadership, Pilates teacher training, Franklin Method Educator certification, and women's circles facilitation training. She credits much of her knowing to lessons learned in devotion to friendship and community.