Woodson has been teaching “Performance Studio” for 20 years. The class examines “issues of collaboration, how to direct an ensemble, how to rehearse, how to create/find structures that work to express choreographic or compositional concepts and how to consider an audience.” Each of the eight students in the class chooses a cast of two to ten students and spends the semester developing an original idea. Each year’s Performance Project is unique, but Woodson said, “Audiences can always expect to see a wonderfully wide range of approaches to making performance as well as an interesting range of different concepts and concerns. Also, every year I appreciate the project as a way to see what is on the minds and in the imaginations of my students and how their projects reflect (or not) the times, relationships and places that they inhabit.” The final performance is the result of collaborations from “student choreographer/directors, costume designers (mentored by Professor of Theater and Dance Suzanne Dougan), stage manager and crew as well as our expert lighting designer Kathy Couch and our excellent technical staff.”
Harold Aarons ’10 created “Wndrland: Sojourn” about “a person rising out of and falling into slumber, departing from her safe and familiar zone (out of curiosity) and stopping at two ‘places’ before actually realizing that this journey may have been a dream.” He decided to take the course in order to develop his idea for his senior thesis for his Theater and Dance major, a re-imagining of “Alice in Wonderland” that will be performed in April 2010. The performance this weekend will be a scaled-down version of the concept of someone “slipping into a world that isn’t their own and [being] affected by their experience.” Aarons describes the choreographing experience as “intense” because he has before never created a piece that he did not also perform in, but now has “a better sense of spatial mapping and editing in creating works externally.”
In her untitled piece, Mount Holyoke senior Samantha Gilligan “takes the audience into a world that captures the essence of encountering a stranger’s presence. The project unfolds through brief moments of physical interaction as the performers negotiate both each other’s individuality and the unity among the three of them.” She also uses a projected video to add another dimension to the stage, providing additional perspectives. She is currently working on a dance thesis and wanted to take the class to begin research into the process of developing a work which “focuses on the juxtaposition of projected, abstracted bodies and live human bodies in a proscenium theatre. Specifically, the relationship between the absence of a human’s vulnerability within video and the visceral human presence on a stage.”
University of Massachusetts, Amherst student Leah Moriarty created “Take the Sound of the Room Breathing,” “a movement-based work set to vinyl on a record player.” After her experience being in “Performance Project” as a freshman, she was eager for the chance to work with Woodson and use the Holden Theater. She drew inspiration from both her cast and “the images I am surrounded with on a day-to-day basis.” She wanted to develop a work “which elevates the choreography and highlights the performers while experimenting with the role of both the performer and the viewer.”
“Ponyo’s Tail” is drawn from Tanya Jackson ’10’s “experience as a diver and interaction with many assorted ocean creatures.” She was inspired by the films “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” and “The Little Mermaid” and used “movement and text to create two different worlds and tell a story about evolution, self-realization, and identity.” She has participated in Performance Project each year since she began attending Amherst College and wanted to create a piece based on her “fascination with transposing animal movements onto human bodies.” The experience has been “stressful and wonderful,” Jackson said. “My dancers have been amazing gorgeous people and the characters that they play are really inspired and created by them. It’s been a great opportunity to work with other people’s bodies and ideas and bring it all home.”
The evening will also include “Melodramatic Meanderings” by Hampshire College student Katrina De Wees, which explores the concept of the black female body and sexuality; “Jesus Loves You Osama Bin Laden,” in which Emmanuel Genard ’10 opposes the concepts of good and evil; “Heroines,” through which Sarah Perez ’11 examines the concept of the female body; and Teana White ’10’s “Rhythmic Rifts,” set on a playground. There will also be a dance presentation entitled “Gather, Square Off, Catch” by choreographer Cathy Nicoli and her repertory class.
On the experience as a whole, Gilligin reflected, “Since the beginning of the semester, I think that we have all had our moments of frustration and uncertainty and now there seems to be a collective sense of calm as if we all can sigh and say, ‘Okay, we did this.’ On second thought, maybe we won’t actually say this until after the show is done.”
“Performance Project” will be in Holden Theater at 8 p.m. on Dec. 11 and 12. Tickets are free, but reservations are recommended.