Image by Jonathan Hsu

This weekend is a celebration. The 35^th Anniversary Gala brings together artists who have been integral to the festival’s trajectory, replenishing and reinventing the spirit of BDF summer after summer. The celebration centers on the pillars of BDF, Marcy Plavin and Laura Faure, the two women responsible for nurturing the festival into what it is today. These indomitable women pioneered a community bonded by a love for movement and a commitment to cherish the individual, together. To Marcy Plavin, the founder of the festival 35 years ago, we say goodbye, we lovingly reminisce. To Laura Faure, the director of the festival for the past 30 years, who we lovingly celebrate, we say good luck. To both, we extend our deepest gratitude in the best way we know how: moving together.

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It feels only right that Bebe Miller returns once again to the festival, as she is the artist Laura first brought thirty years ago. This weekend she performs “In A Rhythm,” an excerpt from a new work in process. Miller and longtime collaborator Angie Hauser come together for an intricately woven improvisatory duet that reads like a conversation. The two women navigate a relationship rooted in language and physicality, juggling who is speaking and who is moving with care and reactivity. Their presence is consuming, their focus palpable. They are firecrackers, astutely perceptive to each other and the audience, continually nourishing the experience of making and doing with the experience of being watched. It is a sophisticated game of freeze dance, one with malleable rules and a buoyant sound score. The tone of reactivity is set from the beginning, when the two women are revealed onstage, both listening to the same device. The audience cannot hear, only the performers can. We are privy to this mystery only when they speak, Bebe and Angie, when they are awoken from their own listening, speaking phrases one can only assume have just been placed in their ear. The duet, although from a new work, is heavy with history, performed from a deep place of knowing, making the unknowing so satisfying.

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A Maine native, Riley Watts makes his festival premiere alongside longtime festival musician, Carl Landa. “Tonight’s Pattern” comes and goes in a flicker, ever-shifting and constantly renegotiating. It is an improvisation reliant entirely on memory and the present moment, emphasizing surprise, recognizing the sensation of being watched, and remembering the night before. Watts responds to the moment, constantly folding in on himself, never collapsing but expanding outward. It is a stream of consciousness, a deeply inquisitive investigation of dance thinking rubbing up against performative circumstance, demonstrating a technical prowess and an agility of thought. Through his physicality, you recognize the power of his mind. Watts expands into a superhuman and flashes into a firefly, redefining the trajectory of his solo, entirely contingent on this stage and this night. It is in the doing that the idea comes. The first move starts a journey, a spiraling and paradoxical train of thought that can only be resolved through the body. Circumstantially intuitive and technically stunning, “Tonight’s Pattern” is all consuming; inescapable and fully intangible.

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The rest of the program is characterized by thought, play, and investigation. Larry Keigwin opens the show with a playful solo to lively music that invigorates the space. Patrik Widrig’s “…And Still Doing…” is dominated by a sense of urgency in physical intent accompanied by a strategic perplexity in spoken word. In “Dr. Pearson’s Guide to Loss and Fear” Sara Pearson sketches an autobiographical narrative emphasizing didactic textual impetus in a rooted bed of movement sensibility. She loses track and tracks her loss, her fear. Tania Isaac’s words vibrate through the theatre and white crumples hang from the ceiling as she navigates the space below, excavating herself between her words and her movement. Doug Varone’s poignant duet with Natalie Desch illuminates the facets of a deeply personal relationship. The evening closes with a group work created by Michael Foley on students of the festival, an intricate weaving of partnering and sensibility, a love letter to his mentor Marcy Plavin and friend Laura Faure.

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This show is full of love; love for dance and for this community. This incredible lineup of artists has come together to celebrate and honor this incredible world that has been created at the Bates Dance Festival. An evening of opulent and evocative work, these artists bring with them a history deeply influenced by the festival, by the two women who stand as pillars. Before, during, and after the show, we find ourselves returning to sentiments of gratitude. These sentiments live deeply within us, they always have; sentiments we sprinkle through the movement of our lives, reinvigorating the spirit of the Bates Dance Festival everywhere we go. For that, we have Marcy and Laura to thank.

This post was written by Phoebe Ballard. Phoebe is the BDF social media intern for the 2017 summer. 

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Within the first seven days of the Professional Training Program participants had seen two shows in the Schaeffer Theatre, had taken up to twenty dance classes, learned more about zoe|juniper in a show and tell event, participated in massage workshops, master classes, and panel discussions, auditioned for Michael Foley’s gala piece, jammed at the Contact Improvisation jam held by Nancy Stark Smith, and even hung out at the annual “Pants Party,” held by Melody Eggen.

Our daily classes, ranging from modern to ballet to creative process to Caribbean Dance Hall, have been lively and fun. Teachers strive to amplify community, which again and again proves to be a simple task, as students continually step foot in the classroom with that goal in mind. Openness and a willingness to try new things are staples of each classroom, a bolded point on the mutually-agreed-upon-but-never-handed-out syllabus. It is hot and it is sweaty, each space alive with the energy and heat generated in the class before. We are testing boundaries, redefining bravery, and emboldening each other, leaving a deep but fulfilling soreness in our bones, a soreness that makes it hard to sit down at dinner but a soreness that is the driving force bringing us back to class each day reinvigorated and reenergized.

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Contact builds community, and in this community, physical contact is key. Nancy Stark Smith led a masterful contact jam in Alumni Gym on Wednesday, which will be complimented by a follow up jam this coming Wednesday. At 7:30, participants filled the gym with their energy, and the rules of the space were established. No photos or videos, feel free to take it slow, invest deeply in your partner and the improvisation, you can dance or watch as much as you’d like, and, most importantly, no talking. Voices were absent from the space, amplifying the movement and making the room not quiet and not loud, but very full. Risk taking and human connection were primary, each participant navigating new bodies in a sea of support, both on the marley and off.

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The traditions begin to reveal themselves during the first week of PTP, taking the form of bonus workshops, panel discussions, lunchtime conversations, and, a true festival favorite, the “Pants Party”. Melody Eggen, our resident costume designer, brings a collection of wide-legged, loose, patterned pants, shirts, and jumpers, a tradition that has begun a festival-recognized-but-once-again-unspoken-dress code for BDF dancers and faculty. Gathering together in the living room of Frye House, people pick through, try on, and purchase brightly colored patterned pants that sprinkle Bates campus, bringing the spirit and magic of the festival into the dining hall, the quad, and the town of Lewiston. Melody’s creations live in the BDF Store for the remainder of the festival, so if you missed the party, be sure to head over.

The past week was full and set the tone for a great two weeks to come. This week, we have a flood of artists and alumni returning for the 35^th Anniversary Gala, which honors the legacy of both Marcy Plavin and Laura Faure and highlights and celebrates the eclectic and extensive history of the festival. The Musicians’ Concert takes place Monday night and each evening this week holds various activities sure to leave participants fulfilled (and slightly exhausted, but that’s exactly what’s expected).

This post was written by Phoebe Ballard. Phoebe is the BDF social media intern for the 2017 summer.

Scofield’s choreography is heavily influenced by her ballet training, upholding the technical prowess necessary to accomplish such feats, but breaking down the elements to find rhythmic and physical variance. Scofield’s visionary choreographic choices enrapture the space, sending dancers spiraling in very intentional paths coming into contact with one another only to find themselves alone shortly after. Trust is emphasized, blindfolds are worn, community is encouraged. It is rigorous and precise, provoking thoughtful inquiries and deeper thinking, a moving picture of brain, body, and being.

The movement is just one element of this performative expedition, wholly important yet only a piece. Juniper Shuey’s visual design gives a notion of roundness, centralizing the dancers and giving them boundless space within the performance area, allowing them to be fully and uniquely seen. A circular band of strings dangle magnificently from the ceiling, and beneath it, a warm ring imprints the floor – making these disconnected entities one – as if the band of strings had left this imprint, or the strings had risen from it. Shuey’s work hones in on center, centralizing and dispelling energy to the space and the borders, etching this memory within it, a space filled with dancers and audience members alike.

Washing over and padding the theatre, the work becomes even more enriched with aural movement and transposition. The sound for the work comes from traditions of Sacred Harp Singing, as does much of the inspiration for the work itself. The singing is live and allows audiences the opportunity to participate, mirroring the traditions of Sacred Harp Singing – in which it is not a performative act, but a ritual of participation. Local Maine singers and recorded sounds become atmospheric and resonate differently with each audience member, dependent entirely on their seat. It is rich and provocative. This, layered with Evan Anderson’s new compositions, heavily influenced by the elements of death metal, support the work, creating yet another unique and necessary entry point in.

“Clear and Sweet” provides each viewer with a unique experience from their particular angle. It feels like a hollow abstraction teeming with life. The choreographic, visual, and sonic elements come together to create a unique experience, one that examines ritual, redemption, and community, while highlighting and providing shifting points of perspective. It allows audiences the opportunity to be alone, together; filling a porous container that is constantly collapsing in and expanding out.

This post was written by Phoebe Ballard. Phoebe is the BDF Social Media intern for the 2017 summer. All images by Jonathan Hsu.

Image by Jonathan Hsu

“Aroundtown” is alive, constantly shifting, collectively together. It leaves a pit in your stomach, a yearning for more, a desire to go there, to do that. Grandiose movement phrases and daring feats of physical stamina mirror the sweeping tone of the work, finding beauty and intimacy in the mundane, determining and defining a sublime way of existing in the world. The music, new compositions by Liz de Lise, Sam Crawford, Zeb Gould, and Jeff Hudgins, are performed live and add yet another layer of robustly evocative humanity to this rich world. The process, which has spanned over two years, has been a constant practice of sorting through and seeing. This work, which is responsive to the current moment, thrives on a constant questioning of what the most important residue is, both within the company and within the world. The result is sensical and familiar, but all at once nonsensical and abandoned, presenting an honest exactness that is subject to change at any given moment.

Six dancers comprise the cast, the community. We see Kendra and Simon, Nik and Aya, Jordan and Jasmine. The work is contingent on them. We see these people, their whole being, not just their dancing body. Through the act of dancing they not only show themselves fully, they become themselves fully. The beauty comes with the togetherness of the dancers actively listening in the present moment, deeply sensing each other as humans above all else. Language is welcomed and necessary in this world, giving time and space to establish ideas and let them settle. Not just moving bodies, each dancer approaches the work from a deep place of truth, bringing with them their past and allowing it to mold their present. They support each other profoundly, sincerely, earnestly. Physical feats coupled with an unabashed outpouring of emotion create an emphatic world, wholly familiar and unfamiliar, sculpting a standard we, audience members and performers alike, relate to and strive for.

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The sense of community is palpable, a commonality in Dorfman’s work that is heavily amplified in “Aroundtown”. Impulsiveness stokes the dance, igniting performers and bringing them together, risking it all, physically and emotionally, individually as an entity. Touch is not just functional, it is an imprint left on each body, brought there physically and leaving a residue deeply infused with emotion. It is tender and it is human, it is all the things we cannot be alone. The work is constantly testing love and asking it to be real, not as a monumental or abstract idea, but as a glorious reality. “Aroundtown” functions as a real town, an enlivened community, the performers odd and model citizens. It is a thing everyone knows and recognizes; a folk dance we are all a part of and have different roles in.

This work is an astonishing and beautiful feat of humanity. “Aroundtown” is an alchemy of movement and language, calling upon familiarities evident in society to craft a world beautifully specific and universally recognized, held preciously in the bodies and spirits of the movers and in the hearts of the audience. It is something they (and we) do not get to realize unless we are together, and that doesn’t always mean in unison.

This post was written by Phoebe Ballard. Phoebe is the BDF social media intern for the 2017 summer. Special thanks to Kendra Portier and Simon Thomas-Train for their insightful words.