Premiered as a part of Platform 2026: Secret Gardens, With in, Around, With out… me is a solo, that continues Stacy Matthew Spence‘s interest in navigating internal and external terrains. It is the sharing of self by exploring the internal essence of a person coming forth to the external as expressive movement along with a play of internal rhythms that are inherent to a person. In this work, “I am also reconnecting to the world beyond the self and the shaping I may have on a place and the place may have on me. Extending from there, I am also playing with responding to the immediate alive space around me and how to be present and responsive with the larger environment that extends beyond myself” writes Spence.

Arriving In Around Out: A Video Poem was filmed and edited by Platform Writer-in-Residence, Myssi Robinson and “traces the unfolding of energy across the inaugural performance of With in, Around, With out … me” which was performed on Tuesday, April 21 2026. “Stacy’s practice tunes to expanding orbits of perception: self / others / space / spirit / body / mind / with / without / within. My editing rhythms aim to track this cycling and to witness the sensitive arrivals that it inspires” writes Robinson. Along with this video poem, Robinson has included a short interview exchange between herself and Spence which is also embedded in a visual archival quilt of poetic reflections on the performance.

[Myssi] tell us about the circles … of sticks, of flowers, of staff on earth. what was made possible through this ritual cycling / bordering / defining? in the inner holds, how did your dance shift?

[Stacy] Oh, the circles are encompassing a number of things for the piece. They hold, protect, corral, constrain, shape. They give a defined something to be in or out of. The circles are areas within the whole around us. They are each a line that continues upon itself. I did want all of the circles to be personal, so making them myself was important and the use of materials from the natural world to connect to the origin of things. So, I used wooden sticks with black pigment as a link to the lead in the pencils, flowers made of wood, a wooden walking stick my daughter picked up on a hike upstate with chalk on the end of it, and clay bowls I made to give others another kind of circle to hold. On my shirt, painted roses with a circle cut out over my heart. The floating circle of light that could be the moon, sun, spirit. The people watching as part of a circle. The musicians join me along the second circle and then make a circle with me at the ending jam, bringing our full selves together.

As this dance progresses my internal self becomes more and more in conversation with the external world. As I progress to each circle, and that conversation widens, the unknown increases. The circle is also a call back to my history performing with Danspace. In 2012 I did a durational piece titled Trekking, where I was on a continuous walking pathway that first circled the outside of St. Mark’s Church, then the path bisected the church to lead me in and out of the building, then to circle only inside the building, and finally spiral to a place in the church where I settled and served tea to people. The circles are also related to a practice I have of drawing pathways as I traverse different spaces. A way of mapping my traversing of a space or place. I imagine that I am leaving a traceable path as I travel around. Cutting through different spaces and terrains, leaving a mark, a trail, an impression. 

This idea of cutting through space and the human action leaving its mark upon places, is an idea that I found kinship within the work of Gordon Matta-Clarke. Before this work became With in, Around, With out… me, Judy Hussie-Taylor and Seta Morton had asked if I would contribute a work in a collaboration between Danspace Project, The Swiss Institute and The Poetry Project in a performance celebration asking different artists to respond to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark. Matta-Clarke had made a piece for St. Mark’s Church in which a procession of people arrived, presented and planted a rosebush and Gordon created a sculpture around the plant. The piece is titled Rosebush. The sculpture is still there in the front of the church. My creative contribution was an improvised solo dance, with the ambient sound, in response to his Rosebush. As I researched Matta-Clarke’s work, I saw additional parallels in my own ongoing investigations of person and environment with his intersects with built environments like buildings and homes, as well as lands that had been used or shaped by people. His art exposed the effect of people on these places and asked people to think about their relationship to these created environments. Powerful statements with abstracted cuts, fissures, cracks, plantings acted upon by people. So, from that conversation with Matta-Clarke’s work, I went on to expand the work anew, diving deeper into my own interest in impulsive movement and form, the human in abstractness, internal and external, the sharing of self, and the exchange between ourselves and environments.

[Myssi] tell us about the invitation to expand witnessing … why did you invite audience to layer their impressions into notebooks post-show … to lay hands, to weave an collective internal archive?

[Stacy] The invitation of notebooks among the audience was exploration of the work of our internal being becoming external expression. I hoped for a chance of sharing as I am sharing, of sharing what may be inside of you independently or because of what you are experiencing. Experiences from the self, environment, others, me, the movement, the sounds, the sounds, the music. Hopefully a chance for people to be aware of themselves and what is surrounding them. Hopefully people would choose to let those internal journeys become a bit external, mark it down, share if they would like. What does the sharing do? What does the receiving do? What does knowing the possibility do? With that, I made these “sitting areas” of cloth and pillows, to soften people’s time there. Maybe started a tactile sense in their own bodies and thoughts. Clay bowls to hold, rub, feel. Someone designed and wove this fabric; someone made this bowl. It is shared.

[Myssi] tell us about the aftermaths … what lingers? what will be carried forward? how are you marked?

[Stacy] As I continue in this work and create with others, I am reminded of the beauty of each of us as individuals. When we come together to add and receive that individuality, we can build something powerful, something surprising that can speak not only to the individual, but beyond as well. Working with Selendis, Nora, Charlotte and Raf was so joyful and incredible! The willingness to share of themselves, enlarged our possibilities. I hope to give the artists I collaborate with, a space where they feel a freedom to explore and feel a worth to their own experiences and histories as additive and one of a kind. Maybe we can pass that to the people as well.