The Well (excerpt): was performed by the Method Contemporary Dance Society for the Community Moves Festival 2024 Mainstage at the Knox Performance Centre in Prince George, BC, Canada. Performer, Shelby Richardson; Choreography, Shelby Richardson'; Costume design (The Skin Dress), Lisa Dickson.

This is the opening movement of a longer piece exploring identity and darkness. “Release” documents the first plunge through the surface that shreds and pulls away the accretions of the past—expectations, conformity, regrets—and leaves the naked self free to sink into the depths of a generative darkness. Made of crepe paper and an embedded network of wool fibers, the Skin Dress was destroyed each performance . The vein-like cords of the skin dress radiate out from the dress and into the audience, their tautness constraining the dancer as she moves and simultaneously providing the resistance and tension she needs to release and shred the dress. The skin dress and the movement released from its confinement span the distance between the intensely personal, interior spaces of the dancer’s self and the public spaces of the audience and the world beyond the darkened theatre