F. Graduate Work, 1984-1986

After I graduated from Bennington College in 1973, I spent the ten years before I came back to Bennington, touring with the Collaborative Ensemble of Dancers and Musicians, (which were a group of dancers and musicians who studied together at Bennington College as undergraduates), traveling to Alaska with my future husband, (where we went down a cliff on the Alaskan Highway, miraculously survived, and had to stay in a brothel for two weeks in the Yukon while our car was being fixed, having been totaled) My husband and I lived over a bar in Rutland, Vermont where I had a dance studio, and he had an ongoing tag sale. We bought land, built our own house with a friend and raised all of our own food and animals in Sudbury, Vermont. A former Chair of the Dance program at Williams College, Joy Dewey, called me to bring me back into the dance world and I taught at Williams for a year. I then filled a sabbatical for the Dance Chair at Castleton State College, and then I reconnected with Judith Dunn, my former Dance teacher at Bennington College as an undergraduate, who asked if I could come back to Bennington to teach her Improvisation classes as her health was failing. I was honored to come back to teach Improvisation and was surprised as Judi and I had a complicated relationship when I was a student at Bennington College. There was a legend that I was the only dance student in Bennington’s history that majored in Dance, who failed all of their dance classes in one term. I take full responsibility for this as it was the late 60s, and I was a mess. To then come back, and teach Improvisation in the legacy of Judith Dunn, was very significant for me and connected me to my Improvisation work in an even more serious manner. Bill Dixon was still teaching at Bennington, and I co-taught classes with Bill during this time. Originally, I came back once or twice a week to teach Improvisation classes, but there had been a conversation among the faculty (at this time, it was Jack Moore, Barbara Roan, Martha and Joe Wittman, and guest faculty) that they were interested in starting an MFA in Dance graduate program. Since I had come back to teach, they asked me if I wanted to be the first student in this program. That began the graduate program in Dance at Bennington College. It ended up being a really fruitful and wonderful two years of developing my Improvisation work, choreographing brand new pieces, participating in the Vermont Dance Festivals, and connecting with some really gifted and talented undergraduate dance students: Andrew Grossman, Melissa Rosenberg, Andrea Kane, Bill Engstrand, Hope Clark, Chivas Sandage, Hillary Ince, Dina Emerson, DD Dorvillier and Julia McCamy. During this time, I was developing the improvisation work in collaboration with students, collaborated with Tony Carruthers and Danny Michaelson, performed in compositions by Martha Wittman, and worked with Ron Dabney, and started performing improvisation with Penny Campbell. I was also directing The Governor’s Institute on the Arts in the summer.