II. river-bend
I want to know and control
more than I want to admit.
My canoe paddle drags against the current.
I squint
into the strong wind, the sun,
into every gaze that dares return my own.
Black hole pupils filter
what isn’t meant for me
while love dilates truth to see.
No screeching halt
only riverbend:
canoe in clearwater flow
sun behind me, facing east
a steady oar toward morning
when the trepidatious gaze of dawn
blinks the sleepy horizon alight
to stare me down again.
Above is a 10-minute screendance featuring two dancers whose introspective yet dramatic movements tell a story about seeing and being seen. In Above, motifs such as architecture, metal, water, sky are grounded through the film’s choreography, as well as a poem, Encroached, recited by one of the protagonists, about vulnerability through exposure to the elements. The film symbolizes the associations between sentimentality and materiality through the evolving relationship between the dancers. Onscreen, they look toward vast horizons, into the gaze of each other, and into the lens to meet the eyes of the onlooking audience, to see the world anew from high vantage points of architectural remnants.
The music is Fantasy of the Forest by Rory Bricca, a piano piece about how our own fate is tied to that of the planet. Fantasy of the Forest is featured in “Palette to Purpose,” a multi-sensory art exhibit to fundraise for environmental advocacy and cataract surgery, with the motivating question prompting the artists being “What is your ecological vision?” Bricca’s composition features “beautiful major triads in the right hand being interrupted by a dissonant bass melody,” to “capture this juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and the terrifying power that our species has to destroy it.” Bricca’s piano piece is divided into five movements, which guide the film’s edit: “Somber clouds shifting across the sky, An open hand enshrouded by darkness, Tightly bound red string of fate, A radiating glimmer of hope appears, and The world lies in our hands.” // On Rory Bricca’s Piano composition
Directed, Choreographed, Filmed, & Edited by Lily Selthofner
Dancers: Adara Allen and Desislava Kreminlieva
Piano composed and performed by Rory Bricca – Fantasy of the Forest
Poem Encroached written by Lily Selthofner, performed by Desislava Kreminlieva
Harbor is an 11-minute dance with six performers, featuring elegant, ritualistic contemporary choreography set to mystical, folksy banjo. Parsing through the unavoidable liminal march toward the abyss of change, each of Harbor‘s performers embodies a different archetype, drawing from the tarot’s major arcana: The Fool, The Oracle, The Empress, The Hermit, Judgment, and The Moon.
Spoken text on melancholic, everyday, and morbid themes juxtaposes movement motifs of childlike innocence such as rock, paper, scissors and hopscotch. Symbols like numbers and electron bonds are playfully infused to intersect Harbor‘s momentum-filled dance elements, which portray the at once somber and firey exploration of new realms. Harbor prods at the tensions between free will, destiny, karma, meaning, and return.
Read the poetry spoken in the piece here
Harbor (2026) Presented by Open Dance Ensemble // at Movement Research NYC, June 2026
Choreographed by Lily Selthofner
Directed by Lily Selthofner and Philip Ellis Foster
Dancers: Adara Allen, Shannon Binns, Desislava Kreminlieva, Tommie McHale, Lily Selthofner, and Justin Shaw
Music: Live Banjo Accompaniment by Justin Shaw
Grey Funnel Line by Silly Sisters
Kalimankou Denkou by Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir
Videography by Adam Myers
As a Research Fellow with Borshch of Art in 2025, I wrote a book called “Poetics of Displacement: Maya Deren Through a Ukrainian Lens,” featuring interviews with contemporary Ukrainian artists: Katya Grokhovsky, Slinko, Daria Dorosh, and Luba Drozd. In June 2026, I presented my research findings and facilitated a panel conversation with the interviewed artists at the Chelsea Academy of Design in NYC.
Like many Ukrainian artists, avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren’s legacy has historically suffered from erasure and appropriation under Soviet imperialism. While her groundbreaking influence as a feminist artist is properly celebrated, the distinctly Ukrainian aspects of her films and legacy have remained largely unexamined. This research aims to fill that significant gap in dance and film history, where her Deren’s work is canonically referenced but predominately subsumed into the American avant-garde.
Borshch of Art sold printed copies of this excerpt, which features key chapters on Deren’s biographical history alongside case studies of her first three films. The digital publication of this excerpt will be available soon via open access through Borshch of Art’s Discover Database. I look forward to sharing updates regarding the publication of the the full 80,000-word manuscript as a book down the line!
