concorDance contemporary & The Movement Party Presents:
A Dance Score for the Downtown Mall: re/de/unfamiliarize a Charlottesville icon.
A dance progression on Sunday April 14 culminates in a special Tom Talks with Katie Schetlick, co-director of the Fleet Moves Festival. Her talk, "Experiencing Place: Dance as a tool for deeper understanding" discusses the process of re-imagining places through dance and performance.
---------------- ABOUT --------------------
Starting Location: The Water Street Entrance of the Transit Center
Dancers: Veronica Hart, Alanna Mahon, Katie Schetlick
Musicians: Sam Cushman, Drums & The Shadow Delay, Ensemble
The idea for the performance was inspired by the work of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. Lawrence Halprin was an influential American landscape architect, designer, and teacher, and designed the Downtown Mall. His wife, highly accomplished and influential dancer, Anna Halprin, was a long time collaborator. Together they explored the intersection of choreography and the use of public space.
Halprin's work is marked by his attention to human scale and experience and the social impact of design. Anna Halprin, similarly, took an interest in human form and interaction and helped shape the art of post modern dance. Many of her works were based on the use of scores, a set of instructions that tells performers what to do, but provides space for decisions to be made about how. When designing the Downtown Mall, Lawrence Halprin constructed scores to bring Charlottesvile community members together in exploration of the city’s public spaces. Our score was developed as a reflection/homage to the Halprin's and to the Downtown Mall, our central space in Charlottesville.
One of the key ways we are demonstrating this is by using a score. The score will be available for audience members at the Water Street entrance of the Transit Center, on the Tom Tom Founders Festival website, and written on the Freedom of Speech chalk walk at the east end of the Downtown Mall.
A Dance Score for the Downtown Mall
The Dance Begins:
Transit Station, Water Street Landing
Building presence: Phrase #1, #2, #3
Progress/Retrograde: Gesture phrase
TRANSITION- Bodies Separate: Exploration of negative space : Bodies Collect
City Space Plaza
Vary horizons: Phrase #1, #2 with interruptions, pauses, stillness
Harmonize: Phrase #1, #2 with spatial restrictions
TRANSITION- Alter speeds
3rd Street Crossing
Call/Respond: All movements
TRANSITION- Observational walk
Central Place at Fountain
Gradate space and time: Phrase #3 on, around, between structures
Repetition/ Internalization: Gesture phrase
TRANSITION- Escape
Old Metropolitan (12PM performance)
Reflect/Transpose: Phrase #1, #2, #3 multiplied
Fellini’s, the sidewalk, & The Haven (2:30PM performance)
Draw vectors: Phrase #1, #2, #3
TRANSITION- Gather
McGuffey Art Center (2:30PM performance)
Condense/ Find Space
: The Dance Ends
* action or instruction: dance material
* phrase: a sequence of movements linked together to create a kinetic sentence
Co-created by Veronica Hart (pictured) and Katie Schetlick