“Site and Sensibility: Twenty Years of Dances by Collage Dance Theater.”
Presented at the 2007 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference.
Abstract: This paper investigates CDT’s 20-year performance history as a process of deepening sensitivity to site and place. I identify three stages of spatial consciousness in CDT’s work with regards to the performers’ and audiences’ relationship to site. From quirky takes on domesticity set in public “place types” (like Laundromats and fountains) that were merely observed by seated audiences, CDT’s work evolved into a sort of guerilla theater that re-familiarized audiences (still seated) with neglected urban infrastructure during performative cultural commentaries on life in LA. From there, CDT’s work evolved into complex multi-media, site-specific performances inspired by and created within the context of iconic, abandoned buildings, in which the movements of audiences (not just the dancers) were mapped throughout the site, resulting in mobile, site-specific works indigenous to LA. In these latter works, as audiences followed performances through the sites on pre-established routes, stopping in designated spaces embellished (through choreography, costumes, video, text and music) with cultural knowledge of the site, audience members acquired new layers of insight about place.
“Mississippi Movement: Marylee Hardenbergh’s Site-Specific Dances for the Mississippi River”
Presented at the 2006 International Conference on Rivers and Civilization, “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Major River Systems.”
Abstract: Since 1997, thousands of people have gathered on the historic Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis to experience the vibrant site-specific dance, “Solstice River.” Choreographed by Marylee Hardenbergh, the free event includes brightly clad dancers on boats and a jetty in the river, on the infrastructure of the lock-and-dam, and on the roofs and balconies of adjacent flour-milling ruins. At dusk, Hardenbergh unfurls a swath of blue fabric down the bridge and urges the audience to “hold the river” while children frolic underneath. Hardenbergh’s goal is to transform audience perceptions of the river and its environs. She’s succeeded. In a recent survey, 60 percent of respondents reported behavior changes related to their water and lawn-fertilizer use, and increased understanding of the river’s ecosystem because of the performance and accompanying educational materials.
In this presentation, LeFevre defines site-specific dance and how it reinvigorates sites for audiences; describes the effectiveness of Hardenbergh’s dance-therapy-based choreographic technique; and, using power-point slides, illustrates how the dance connects viewers with the river. LeFevre also presents images and information on Hardenbergh’s “One River Mississippi,” premiering June 24, 2006. An expansion of “Solstice River,” the ecosystem-long “One River Mississippi” features simultaneous performances at six additional sites on the Mississippi: the Itasca headwaters, the Quad Cities, St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and Venice, Louisiana (at the river’s mouth).
A powerful metaphor for the interconnectedness of communities along an iconic river at the nation’s center, “One River” has acquired additional potency since the hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. While “Solstice River” is a stellar example of how dance inspired by and performed in a natural setting can inspire fresh perspectives on the environment, “One River Mississippi” promises to engage an entire nation in the civic, industrial and environmental issues interwoven along this majestic waterway.
“One Place, Two Histories: Site-Specific Dance at Jacob’s Pillow”
Presented at the 2006 Society of Dance History Scholars Conference, “Grounding Moves: Landscapes for Dance.”
Abstract: Scholarship on site-specific and other on-site dance practice has previously focused on a single dance maker’s choreographic interpretation of a single location. This paper examines how one site—Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts—inspired and was the setting of two different site-specific dances that reactivated and illuminated contrasting aspects of the legendary dance institution’s cultural history: “Invisible Wings” by Joanna Haigood of San Francisco (1998), and “Night Light” by Ann Carlson of New York City (2001).
Using a postmodern methodology that draws from cultural studies, institutional critique, and phenomenological and historical approaches, LeFevre locates “Invisible Wings” and “Night Light” within her groundbreaking schema of on-site dance practice, in a unique niche between site-specific and site-adaptive dance (LeFevre explains how “versions” of both works have been performed elsewhere). LeFevre identifies the practices and processes of site-specific and site-adaptive dance, and describes how the works by Haigood and Carlson exemplify characteristics of both, and yet qualify as site-specific.
At the same time, LeFevre describes how Haigood and Carlson also brought their distinctly individual methodologies, dance typologies, aesthetic sensibilities and cultural backgrounds to the site-specific process. As a result, their works demonstrate that site-specific dance, while sharing common choreographic processes and characteristics, is not a genre unified by content or aesthetic.
Accompanied by power-point slides and videos of the work, LeFevre describes how “Invisible Wings” was inspired by the site’s pre-Pillow history as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Haigood’s work, which combined contemporary and aerial dance, music, storytelling and a journey through the Pillow property, explored the horrors of slavery, clashes between white slave owners and white Railroad conductors, the complex and redemptive qualities of African-American culture, and the spirituality inherent to sanctuary.
In contrast, “Night Light” was a series of tableaux in which dancers recreated, in perfect stillness, archival photographs of the dance luminaries who populated the Pillow from the 1930s to the 1960s. The audience provided the movement in this piece, as various interpreters guided groups of participants—through the dark, with flashlights—to the tableaux situated throughout the landscapes, decks and porches of the Pillow grounds.
“Invisible Wings” and “Night Light” both utilized the grounds of Jacob’s Pillow to explore various strata of history embedded in the dance institution’s history, to delve into memory both place-related and resonant in American history, and to invite audiences on journeys of enlightenment into the past. This paper will recreate those landscapes and journeys, while grounding these works in a schema of on-site dance practice that furthers discourse on the dance genre.
“Site-Specific Dance, De-Familiarization, and the Transformation of Place and Community.”
Presented at the 2005 Conference of Congress on Research in Dance, “Dance in the Community.” Published in 2005 Conference Proceedings, Congress on Research in Dance.
Abstract: As a manifestation of cultural knowledge in which performers and audiences (as participant observers) take part, site-specific dance allows the diverse members of an audience to experience a shared sense of place as part of an ecumenical community. This paper examines how, through the creative process of de-familiarization, three site-specific choreographers— Heidi Duckler, Los Angeles; Marylee Hardenbergh, Minneapolis; and Joanna Haigood, San Francisco—re-contextualize and re-animate urban spaces that have been overlooked, transforming them into urban sites of community gathering and cultural insight. The paper also offers a groundbreaking definition of site-specific dance.
Presented at the 2007 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference.
Abstract: This paper investigates CDT’s 20-year performance history as a process of deepening sensitivity to site and place. I identify three stages of spatial consciousness in CDT’s work with regards to the performers’ and audiences’ relationship to site. From quirky takes on domesticity set in public “place types” (like Laundromats and fountains) that were merely observed by seated audiences, CDT’s work evolved into a sort of guerilla theater that re-familiarized audiences (still seated) with neglected urban infrastructure during performative cultural commentaries on life in LA. From there, CDT’s work evolved into complex multi-media, site-specific performances inspired by and created within the context of iconic, abandoned buildings, in which the movements of audiences (not just the dancers) were mapped throughout the site, resulting in mobile, site-specific works indigenous to LA. In these latter works, as audiences followed performances through the sites on pre-established routes, stopping in designated spaces embellished (through choreography, costumes, video, text and music) with cultural knowledge of the site, audience members acquired new layers of insight about place.
“Mississippi Movement: Marylee Hardenbergh’s Site-Specific Dances for the Mississippi River”
Presented at the 2006 International Conference on Rivers and Civilization, “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Major River Systems.”
Abstract: Since 1997, thousands of people have gathered on the historic Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis to experience the vibrant site-specific dance, “Solstice River.” Choreographed by Marylee Hardenbergh, the free event includes brightly clad dancers on boats and a jetty in the river, on the infrastructure of the lock-and-dam, and on the roofs and balconies of adjacent flour-milling ruins. At dusk, Hardenbergh unfurls a swath of blue fabric down the bridge and urges the audience to “hold the river” while children frolic underneath. Hardenbergh’s goal is to transform audience perceptions of the river and its environs. She’s succeeded. In a recent survey, 60 percent of respondents reported behavior changes related to their water and lawn-fertilizer use, and increased understanding of the river’s ecosystem because of the performance and accompanying educational materials.
In this presentation, LeFevre defines site-specific dance and how it reinvigorates sites for audiences; describes the effectiveness of Hardenbergh’s dance-therapy-based choreographic technique; and, using power-point slides, illustrates how the dance connects viewers with the river. LeFevre also presents images and information on Hardenbergh’s “One River Mississippi,” premiering June 24, 2006. An expansion of “Solstice River,” the ecosystem-long “One River Mississippi” features simultaneous performances at six additional sites on the Mississippi: the Itasca headwaters, the Quad Cities, St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and Venice, Louisiana (at the river’s mouth).
A powerful metaphor for the interconnectedness of communities along an iconic river at the nation’s center, “One River” has acquired additional potency since the hurricane devastation along the Gulf Coast. While “Solstice River” is a stellar example of how dance inspired by and performed in a natural setting can inspire fresh perspectives on the environment, “One River Mississippi” promises to engage an entire nation in the civic, industrial and environmental issues interwoven along this majestic waterway.
“One Place, Two Histories: Site-Specific Dance at Jacob’s Pillow”
Presented at the 2006 Society of Dance History Scholars Conference, “Grounding Moves: Landscapes for Dance.”
Abstract: Scholarship on site-specific and other on-site dance practice has previously focused on a single dance maker’s choreographic interpretation of a single location. This paper examines how one site—Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts—inspired and was the setting of two different site-specific dances that reactivated and illuminated contrasting aspects of the legendary dance institution’s cultural history: “Invisible Wings” by Joanna Haigood of San Francisco (1998), and “Night Light” by Ann Carlson of New York City (2001).
Using a postmodern methodology that draws from cultural studies, institutional critique, and phenomenological and historical approaches, LeFevre locates “Invisible Wings” and “Night Light” within her groundbreaking schema of on-site dance practice, in a unique niche between site-specific and site-adaptive dance (LeFevre explains how “versions” of both works have been performed elsewhere). LeFevre identifies the practices and processes of site-specific and site-adaptive dance, and describes how the works by Haigood and Carlson exemplify characteristics of both, and yet qualify as site-specific.
At the same time, LeFevre describes how Haigood and Carlson also brought their distinctly individual methodologies, dance typologies, aesthetic sensibilities and cultural backgrounds to the site-specific process. As a result, their works demonstrate that site-specific dance, while sharing common choreographic processes and characteristics, is not a genre unified by content or aesthetic.
Accompanied by power-point slides and videos of the work, LeFevre describes how “Invisible Wings” was inspired by the site’s pre-Pillow history as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Haigood’s work, which combined contemporary and aerial dance, music, storytelling and a journey through the Pillow property, explored the horrors of slavery, clashes between white slave owners and white Railroad conductors, the complex and redemptive qualities of African-American culture, and the spirituality inherent to sanctuary.
In contrast, “Night Light” was a series of tableaux in which dancers recreated, in perfect stillness, archival photographs of the dance luminaries who populated the Pillow from the 1930s to the 1960s. The audience provided the movement in this piece, as various interpreters guided groups of participants—through the dark, with flashlights—to the tableaux situated throughout the landscapes, decks and porches of the Pillow grounds.
“Invisible Wings” and “Night Light” both utilized the grounds of Jacob’s Pillow to explore various strata of history embedded in the dance institution’s history, to delve into memory both place-related and resonant in American history, and to invite audiences on journeys of enlightenment into the past. This paper will recreate those landscapes and journeys, while grounding these works in a schema of on-site dance practice that furthers discourse on the dance genre.
“Site-Specific Dance, De-Familiarization, and the Transformation of Place and Community.”
Presented at the 2005 Conference of Congress on Research in Dance, “Dance in the Community.” Published in 2005 Conference Proceedings, Congress on Research in Dance.
Abstract: As a manifestation of cultural knowledge in which performers and audiences (as participant observers) take part, site-specific dance allows the diverse members of an audience to experience a shared sense of place as part of an ecumenical community. This paper examines how, through the creative process of de-familiarization, three site-specific choreographers— Heidi Duckler, Los Angeles; Marylee Hardenbergh, Minneapolis; and Joanna Haigood, San Francisco—re-contextualize and re-animate urban spaces that have been overlooked, transforming them into urban sites of community gathering and cultural insight. The paper also offers a groundbreaking definition of site-specific dance.