D. Site Dances, 1982-2002

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Site Dances

Site dances were a series of dance compositions that were created for outdoor spaces instead of a more traditional theater performance space. In 1981, there was not really a language for this type of work until later, when they were identified as “site-specific” pieces. I had left the professional dance world once again, and was living on land around a lake in Sudbury, Vermont where Richard and I, with a friend, built our house from many used materials, grew our own food, and raised a bunch of animals. We lived in a tent inside the frame of a house without plumbing or electricity. When I returned to dancing, first teaching at Williams College and then teaching at Castleton State College, I began to be interested in making dances for certain locations.

Here is what I wrote about Site Dances at the time:

Dances made for special natural or man-made environments. These can be churches, museums, gardens, colleges, parks, beaches, mountains and factories. Each composition is made specifically for each site and may be performed at different times of the day. Each dance is videotaped, photographed and written about in essay or poetry form. The audience experiences the journey to the site, the climate, and the unique environment.

Site Dance #1 was for a Pre-Columbian Archaeological Dig near South Woodstock, Vermont at sunrise. I believe a professor at Castleton Ste. College had told me about it. I didn’t realize that there were significant archaeological sites in Vermont, dating back to ancient times.

Agi Klausz, Barbara Cunningham and Kathleen Little were very talented dancers and choreographers in their own right and studied improvisation with me. I would research the history of each site, and be inspired by an exploration of that site based on images that emerged from our studies and investigations.

The audiences trekked in with us to the site, and I always involved musicians that were also improvising with a structured score. Many of the audience members wrote about their experiences afterwards. It was a very new experience in those days to view a dance performance by walking to the site, being part of the location and reflecting after the experience.

Site Dance #3 was performed on Huff Pond in Sudbury, Vermont when it was completely frozen on a winter morning.

I imagined a vision of four women in tuxedos that were masked, that over time transformed into the snowy landscape.

A type of penguin and human that both contrasted the landscape and merged into it.

Site Dance#4 was located at a Vermont Marble Quarry on Danby Mountain in Vermont. It was a spectacular site of large caves and huge marble slabs. It was a long hike up the mountain to the site. The dancers were clothed in black robes, bringing particular objects to a large American flag placed in the quarry.

Site Dance#5 was based on Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and was performed at three sites at Bennington College when I was a graduate student: sunrise on a mountain slope, afternoon in a garden and midnight on the outdoor porch outside of Martha Hill Dance Theater.

Site Dance#6 was a performance at Horseneck Beach in New Bedford, Massachusetts in a collaboration with sculptor Ron Rudnicki. It included three women in a very introspective work that resulted in them walking into the ocean at the end.

Later on in other sections of this Archive, the Farm Series, the Factory Series, the Housatonic River Project and the dance composition involving an eight foot paper Origami bird that was assembled by dancers at Sarah Delano Roosevelt Park in NYC were all pieces that connected to this theme of dances related to particular locations and how that affected the dancers and the audiences.

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