WORN is a contemporary dance work that explores closeness, trust, and reclamation through the body and through the materiality of a shirt. The shirt becomes a second skin, something that comforts, protects, and constricts. The dancers navigate the shifting tension between holding on and letting go, between care and control.

The work unfolds in three phases: the comfort of closeness, the disruption, and release. Rooted in DeRose’s experience living in an abusive relationship, WORN is not a literal retelling but instead it asks: How do we learn to trust again? How do we reclaim softness after harm? The goal is to create a space where softness and resistance coexist where the act of dancing becomes an act of reclamation, and where the audience witnesses the body shed and transform itself.

WORN was most recently in development through the MAI mentorship program and was awarded a Canada Council grant for continued research in a month-long residency in Yellowknife. The work was also presented at the Art in the Open Festival in Charlottetown, PEI, this past summer.