Site and Visual Art

(2025) In this interdisciplinary work between dancer Renay Aumiller, pianist Doug Jurs, and a responsive digital projection by artist Ryan Rasmussen, Root Sequence explores the looping pathways of somatic memory - what is stored in the body, what is triggered by sound, and what grows in between. As Renay moves to Doug’s music, Ryan’s digital projection expands and contracts in real time, creating a living archive of gesture, music, and presence. Rooted in both code and choreography, the piece asks: How do we remember and what remembers us?

(2021) Presented by the American Dance Festival, the Creative Healing Parade was a powerful response to a time of global uncertainty and isolation. Featuring over 70 North Carolina-based artists—including dancers, musicians, and visual performers—the event brought live art directly to the community through a carefully curated, drive-by performance experience. Set across 24 driveways and front lawns in Durham’s Trinity Ridge neighborhood, each site became a stage for reflection, connection, and joy. Artists performed masked and physically distanced, ensuring safety while honoring the urgency of collective healing through creative expression. Audience members followed a pre-planned route from the safety of their cars, witnessing a parade of resilience and imagination that transformed suburban streets into a moving gallery of hope.

(2019) In Out of the Blue, Renay Aumiller blends humor and technology in an inventive performance where a quirky computer application takes center stage. The app collects movement qualities and body parts suggested by the audience, then pairs them in unexpected and often hilarious combinations—like “languid left pinky” or “nose like a rolling storm.” These playful prompts become the dance score, guiding Aumiller’s movements while also questioning her creative choices. The piece invites viewers to explore the relationship between human spontaneity and algorithmic unpredictability, all with a wink and a nod.

(2021) Created with first-year Elon University dance students, Sitting Tight is a site-specific performance set in a campus lobby—an everyday space transformed through movement. This playful and group-centered dance explores the physicality of waiting, the gestures of sitting, and the quiet transitions between moments. By responding directly to the architecture and design of the lobby, the dancers investigate how space communicates with the body, and how movement is always happening—even in stillness. Through repeated rhythms, pedestrian gestures, and collective timing, Sitting Tight invites audiences to reconsider familiar spaces as stages for storytelling, connection, and meaning-making. It’s a joyful reminder that dance doesn’t just happen on stage—it happens everywhere.

(2020) Release Me is a self-performed installation solo that offers a participatory and thought-provoking commentary on climate change. Central to the performance is an 18-foot skirt crafted entirely from plastic shopping bags, transforming everyday waste into a striking visual symbol. Release Me uses simple yet powerful imagery and movement to engage viewers. As the performance unfolds, the skirt’s labels—from familiar stores like Hobby Lobby, Domino’s, Target, and Goodwill—invite reflection on consumer culture and environmental impact.

(2018) Triad is a site-specific dance created and performed by first-year Elon dance majors that explores dynamic partnerships between dancers and outdoor sculptures. Set in an open-air environment, the work investigates how movement can interact with and be inspired by the shapes, textures, and presence of sculptural forms. By partnering with these inanimate “dancers,” Triad invites both performers and audiences to experience how art and environment can merge, highlighting the dialogue between the human body and its surrounding structures.