When I invited Lauren Wightman to collaborate with me on Mine we were both in the process of letting things die inside of us. I was deep in the throes of heartbreak after ending a long-term partnership and Lauren had just had a chronic illness flare up that led them to question their relationship to performance. “It felt like I was at the beginning of something literally dying,” they told me when we reminisced about the process this week, “and now I feel like I’m at the threshold of the new thing.” Coming back to rehearsal for the Material Gallery show we realized that we are both in very different places than when we started this work.
Photo by Sharon Kain
We created this duet in December and performed it for the first time in January 2026 as part of RDT’s Emerge. Most rehearsals started by lying on the floor in the dark, holding our heavy flesh and bones, trying to gather the immense effort that it would take to move, often with thick tears dripping down our skin. Then we would turn on the flashlights, choosing not to hide in the dark but to look, to see, to witness what was within us. The shadow bodies would arise, pouring and sliding over the white curtain that pulled across the mirror, often merging to create new and inhuman beings. At times the visuals became daunting and grotesque but somehow, we found ourselves in play. “It’s just me,” Lauren said they realized, “I know that shape and there’s endless possibilities, there’s nothing to be scared of.” So, we found ourselves playing in this dark basement with our fear and anger and grief, using the shadows to get curious about what felt so overwhelming and unbearable in our bodies during our day to day. The darkness offered us a way to develop a different, embodied relationship to feelings and experiences that were too terrifying to touch in daylight. The loss transformed into something generative, a spilling into presentness, an embrace of what was ugly and painful but nevertheless ours.
And then we would write. We built a story instead of steps or counts. Every time we ran the piece we would add to the story, letting the movement bring the words alive and letting the words bring us alive in new ways each time. Lauren recounted that one of their favorite runs we ever did was the week before the premiere when it was just the two of us in the studio. “Sometimes I just want to hoard the work,” they shared with me, “[This piece] isn’t about getting on stage and being a show pony, it’s to bring something so private onstage and to try to maintain that feeling as we’re performing it.” The intimate play from our basement rehearsals found its way onto the stage with us and each performance changed to meet what we needed. By the last night I was laughing in moments that previously had me crying, embracing the hand that reached into my shadow rather than flinching away from it, relishing the light on my skin and all the distorted, monstrous shapes that I could create on the wall where the light never touched. All of it was mine, I was both the witness and the object, the light and the shadow, the hand and the held – there was nothing to hide from.
We are coming back to this story lighter in our bodies, stirred up by the adrenaline of not knowing what is next, and still afraid… but curious to see where the story takes us on Friday.
Photo by Sharon Kain
Mine is the third in a series of dance works exploring witness, vulnerability, and relationship to light that I have been developing for the past two years. It will be part of an evening-length show in 2027 including the other two works, Yours and Mine (2024), and Show Me All of It (2025). See it in Material Gallery’s Grief Work performance this Friday, April 3 at 7:30pm at V. Project Studio 826 South 500 West, Suite 2.
Kara Komarnitsky is an interdisciplinary artist currently making work in Salt Lake City. She received a BFA in Dance from Ohio State University and since then has performed with Myriad Dance Company, Fem Dance Company, and Repertory Dance Theatre amongst many community shows; presented work with Illuminate Salt Lake Festival, Utah Dance Film Festival, Queer Spectra Arts Festival, 801 Salon, Red Rock Dance Festival, and RDT’s LINK series; and continues to seek out new avenues of cultivating wonder in her communities.
Halie Bahr is the Editor of loveDANCEmore. For inquiries please message halie@lovedancemore.org
Process writing provided by Kara Komarnitsky