Making Intentional Space for Multidisciplinary Expression
We welcome artist and dancer Christian Burns for a six-month artist residency at the Donkey Mill Art Center. Throughout his time with us, Christian will lead a series of community activations—from site-specific movement explorations to collaborative art and reflection sessions—designed to bridge the worlds of visual art, movement, and embodied awareness.
An interdisciplinary dance artist, choreographer, performer, and educator with over 30 years of experience, Burns’ work merges classical ballet training with improvisation and somatic practice. His inquiry often centers on how we move, perceive, and connect through presence, exploring the intersection of choreography, improvisation, and lived experience. He has performed with leading companies including Alonzo King LINES Ballet, James Sewell Ballet, and The Forsythe Company, and co-founded influential spaces for experimentation such as The Foundry and Parsons Hall Project Space.
“I am deeply inspired by the opportunity to connect with a new community through the many facets of creative practice that the Donkey Mill Art Center offers. My intention during this residency is to uncover a new body of work and a creative process that could only emerge through sustained engagement with the Mill. I will be developing a new performance work rooted in an investigation of my relationship to water, and the personal and embodied stories that are waiting to surface through that inquiry.
For over three decades, I have worked in an interdisciplinary way, integrating movement with drawing, photography, video, and sculpture. This approach was shaped early on by my late father, a designer and visual artist, and has continued to influence how I process and generate ideas. In recent years, I have had limited opportunity to focus fully on my own artistic practice, making this residency especially meaningful and energizing.
I am excited to be in dialogue with the exhibition’s central question — what water means — and with the diverse visual works created by the participating artists. Their imagery will inform and inspire the performance as it takes shape. Ultimately, I hope this residency becomes a time of discovery, exchange, and reconnection — offering audiences an intimate glimpse into an evolving interdisciplinary practice.” Christian Burns
Through this open-ended residency, the Mill seeks to reinterpret narratives within our gallery and collection, challenge how we see and move within our environment, and invite our community to participate in a dynamic exchange between art forms.
On Campus
Each week, starting in January through the month of June, you may see Christian moving and creating in different corners of the Mill—both indoors and outdoors—as part of his evolving process and practice. He will also offer movement workshops for non-dancers, encouraging participants to listen deeply to their bodies, respond to the surrounding artworks, and build a shared language of movement, sound, and stillness.
- Movement Workshop I: Channeling Impulse Into Form – Space
Friday, February 27, 2026, 5:00 – 8:00pm - Movement Workshop II: Channeling Impulse Into Form – Sound
Friday, March 27, 2026, 5:00 – 8:00pm - Movement Workshop III: Channeling Impulse Into Form – Visual Art
Friday, April 24, 2026, 5:00 – 8:00pm
Other Events
Live Performance and Closing of Stories of Water exhibition
Saturday, June 27, 5:00 – 7:00pm
Free and open to the public.
For more information about Christian, please visit his website, his dance account on IG @burnswork, and his coaching/teaching IG account @movingpractices.
Join us in discovering what emerges when art, body, and place move together.
This residency and its community programming have been made possible through the generous support of the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the County of Hawaiʻi Waiwai Grant, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Hiroaki Elaine & Lawrence Kono Foundation, Hōlualoa Inn, and our community of individual donors whose belief in the power of art to connect, transform, and inspire makes this work possible.