H. Factory Series, 1985

The Factory Series was another set of site dances held in factory spaces. I was on the faculty at Bennington College and still very interested in making dances for specific locations. At the time, this was not very typical of dance performance. Most dance performances were held in theaters, dance studios, city lofts, and gallery spaces. I remember speaking to Molissa Fenley about it at the time, as she was a visiting guest in the Dance Program, having choreographed a remarkable piece to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” that she performed in Martha Hill Dance Theater. Sue Rees created the sculpture/set design that was a really interesting structure built out of wood and metal that had complex and intricate movements of its own. Meg Cottam contributed two pieces and Tony Carruthers created a Media Intervention. The main element of my dance composition was a duet with myself and Don Borsch who was an MFA Dance graduate student at the time. There were really talented dance students at the time who were part of the ensemble. They were Colleen Blair, Maureen Ellenhorn, William Engstrand, Maiya Greaves and Jonathan Kinzel. We toured several local and regional factories for the performances and got permission from the factory owners and managers to set up and perform inside the factory in one of the spaces that they were using They were the Fairbanks Weighing Division, Bennington County Industrial Corporation, Sculpture Space, Inc. Vermont Container Corporation and the Twining Gallery. One of the unique aspects to these performances was that the workers in the factory were given time off from their day to watch the dance event. What was remarkable was that the factory workers all stayed to watch the performances and were very generous in their responses.
It was a great experience, and I was so pleased that it was a part of the relationship between the dance program at Bennington College and our local and regional communities.