Thea Little – Honest Process

album released on CD & digitally July 8th, 2022

“an underwater opera from a lost episode of Star Trek” – Dot Armstrong, DanceEnthusiast.com

In Honest Process, Thea Little and collaborators excavate and reinvent ideas of ego, commercialism, and narcissism toward collective ambition, vulnerability, and the wise self. Within a western capitalist culture that carries the pressure of being constantly happy, productive, and successful, Honest Process explores the opposing ideas of self-assured wisdom, internal success, and healing the self with embodied intuitive wisdom. 

Thea Little conceived of the work, built on the sounds of voices and electronics, and led the premier performance at a sold-out National Sawdust in Brooklyn in 2019. The album is a document of that performance and is a study in the sound of a roomful of people watching bodies move. Thea acted as composer, choreographer, dancer, and vocalist and was joined by collaborators Katie Norton-Bliss and Lea Torelli, who also performed movement and vocalizations live. All of the performers’ sounds are part of a performance system developed by Thea called “Character Capsules”.

By utilizing a wash of abstract gestures, vocalizations, and facial expressions that form a communicative internal language, Honest Process exposes a sometimes serious, sometimes playful relation to healing and all that healing can look and feel like. Within Honest Process, there is a strong sense of listening to one another, gently acknowledging and seeing the audience, being present in the moment, being patient with time and space, as well as a healthy dose of humor, competition, and over-the-top improvisation. Honest Process is music for meditation, music for thinking, music for healing.

Honest Process and all of its traces, memories and efforts is forever dedicated to my/our dear and enchanting friend Dave Koenig, and our loved ones.

Honest Process Conceived, Composed and Directed by Thea Little
Performers and Collaborators: Thea Little, Katie Norton-Bliss, Lea Torelli
Sound Design: Brian McCorkle
Choreographer’s Assistant: Emily Aiken