YELLOW is a short dance film inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s fictional short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1890), which follows the journal entries cataloging one woman's mental landscape while being treated for hysteria in the nineteenth century.

Reimagined through a contemporary lens, this film explores themes of intersectional feminism, the oppressive nature of patriarchal control, and the cyclical harm embedded in systems of power that discredit and diminish marginalized voices. At the focal point of the film is the unraveling of self that transpires when autonomy is denied.

Rather than following the narrative arc of the story, the film will be crafted from the visceral themes and textures layered within the narrative, which will be transcribed into a structured improvisational score. For the dancers, this will mean navigating a series of anchored choreographic motifs woven throughout improvisational prompts. For the filmmakers, a parallel score will provide pre-determined compositional anchors while leaving room for intuitive responses to the dancers’ movement. This dual structure ensures that the film itself embodies the tension between restriction and autonomy that lies at the heart of the story.

In honoring the lineage of The Yellow Wallpaper, this project seeks to expand its resonance for today. The film will highlight how patriarchal systems continue to silence, constrain, and invalidate those whose identities or bodies fall outside of dominant power structures, while also imagining spaces of resistance, reclamation, and becoming.