Choreography has no manuscript. Movement and gesture cannot be transcribed as one might a novel or a symphony. Consequently, the history of dance is slippery, difficult to preserve. Even towering figures like Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham faced considerable challenges with the project of preserving their work after their deaths.
In pursuit of a different kind of understanding, undergraduates, guest artists and students from Central Falls High School gathered at the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts this weekend for the American Dance Legacy Initiative’s 15th annual Mini-Fest.
The initiative, a project of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, seeks to transform “how people think about and experience dance through collaborative programming that connects with American heritage and (build) a dance-literate public,” according to the organization’s website.
The Mini-Fest consisted of two performances, an interactive installation, a lecture and master classes.
“Dance can be used more than in a conventional performer-and-audience way,” said Libby Stein ’15, a member of Dance Extension.
Saturday’s lecture, “Dance, Memory and the Oral Tradition,” was part performance and part discussion. One piece by Danny Buraczeski was performed three times: first by Dance Extension, then by Central Falls High School students and finally by a group of people with Parkinson’s disease. Each of the groups danced the same etude, but the movement was adapted to accommodate different bodies and different sensibilities.
The Central Falls “Dance and Tech” class worked on its performance for the Mini-Fest for the past three weeks, said Kilishla Nieuls, a sophomore from Central Falls. She added that she had stage fright performing after Dance Extension. But after the dancers with Parkinson’s disease took to the stage, Nieuls said she came to understand the exercise was not about skill but “about making the dance your own dance.”
“It was amazing to see the three different but similar performances,” said Jenny Sevy ’14.5, a member of Dance Extension. “The performance displayed that dance is accessible to everyone. We are all humans, and humans all move.”
Dance Extension also performed during the two evening concerts Friday and Saturday. Sevy danced a solo piece — an excerpt from a larger work called “After the Multiplex,” which displays the viewer experience watching a film. The unconventional staging all takes place with the dancer perched on a chair. She remains seated, dancing mostly by moving her upper body and arms.
The audience could also perceive this original take on dance in guest artist Stephanie Turner’s piece called “Loose Seam,” which featured guest artist Oleg Sergeyevich reciting a poem by Alexander Pushkin in Russian. Though the majority of audience members did not understand the poem, it was used for acoustic rather than symbolic purposes, Turner said.
“I had a kinesthetic response to his voice, so it was a spontaneous decision to include the poem as part of the performance,” she said, adding that instinctive decisions ensure that the performers’ diverse cultural backgrounds are organically incorporated into the pieces.
The diversity of dance history was also emphasized in the art installations. Each living room space in Granoff focused on a theme from one of the previous Mini-Fests; as a result, these installation spaces collectively told a story about “Dance and Memory,” the focus of this year’s festival. Through artifacts, videos and stories, the installations displayed how dance continues to live on after the movement has been completed, said Julie Strandberg, senior lecturer in theater arts and performance studies and one of ADLI’s founders.
Strandberg said one of the purposes of the festival is to make people feel comfortable with dance and their own bodies. “This festival is here to break down the barrier of who can do dance and who cannot,” she said. “Our field in general has not been encouraging people to dance, telling them they are too fat, too this or that.”
This year’s Mini-Fest overcame these obstacles through four types of events, which gave spectators and performers diverse opportunities to interact and connect to dance. ADLI, and the Mini-Fest, gives dancers the opportunity to preserve choreography through repetition and collaboration.
“In theater you do plays. … If you do music, you read music,” she said. “But most dancers don’t have access to repertoire.”
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