Wondering what to do on Saturday, August 20?  Looking for a fun, family friendly and free event? Come down to Bethlehem for the Local Works Farmer’s Market for a day of fresh food, live dance performances, live music, and fun!

Paul Benny and Selene Colburn lead you on a unique walking tour of Bethlehem:

Idiot Docents: An Unabridged and Partial History of the Comings and Goings of Bethlehem, N.H.
Join the Idiot Docent team of Selene Colburn and Paul Benney as they stumble, trip and fall over the known, and not-so-known history of Bethlehem. The walking tour will take you through field and stream, into the respiratory tract of the National Hay Fever Relief Association, and past the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, to show you how this town became a thriving center for health and wellbeing. Be prepared to walk, listen, roll, jump, close your eyes and dream.

Paul Benney:  Kid’s Class! Leap, Tumble, and Roll
A fun and instructive workshop for dancers and non-dancers ages 8-12.   The class will begin with a vigorous and easy-to-follow warm-up, and then move across the floor with a combination of tumbling, animal locomotion, and partnering. At the end of the class we will put on music and have a good old-fashioned dance party!! All kids are welcome- dancers, athletes, gymnasts, martial artists…anyone with a body!!
class:    Kid’s Class! Leap, Tumble, and Roll!
time:    Saturday, 2-4pm
place: Creative Edge Dance Studio
cost:    $15 FREE!!
for:     Kids, ages 8-12.  No dance experience needed!
more:    visit Cultivate on Eventbrite to reserve your spot!

Thank you to everyone who has been steadily supporting the important work of Cultivate!!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katherineferrier/cultivate-growing-the-dance-community-in-northern/widget/card.html

Here’s a poster to print and hang in your local dance or yoga studio, college dance department, grocery store or coffee shop!

Or share it in your online worlds…thanks for helping to spread the word about Cultivate!  Hope to see you, and dance with you soon!

About a century later,  Iowa-based Amanda Hamp humbly sets out to do this five times, in her evening length work Loss, the Great Escape and Other Memories.  Comprised of five separate solos,  Hamp originally choreographed the work to be performed by five different dancers. Now she challenges herself to perform them all.  She writes:

“I’ve been feeling and thinking of performance differently this past year.  More and more, it’s about the exchange between the performer/performance and the audience.  Or, between the people in the room and the universe.  It’s less about the choreography or the dancing, and more about what flows back and forth through those mediums.  It’s about what experiences, meanings, associations, inspirations, reminders and possibilities flow between audience and performer through the vehicle of performance.  

I work to soften myself so that something larger than myself can happen.“

Hamp will perform 2 of the solos, “The Rest of Alice” and “Dwelling” at Cultivate, and will also facilitate a session of work that serves as the foundation of her physical and creative practice: Open Source Forms, or OSF.

OSF is an expansion of its predecessor, Skinner Releasing Technique, and has been developed by Stephanie Skura based on her years as a teacher, improviser, choreographer, performer and SRT core faculty member. In this session, Hamp will guide movement studies, imagery-based experiences, and brief partner exchanges for conveying kinesthetic information. Wherever the participant is in their own process, OSF facilitates softening and letting go of tensions, holdings and habitual patterns so that other possibilities can emerge.

class:    Open Source Forms
time:     Friday, 2-4pm
place:    Great Hall, WMS
cost:      $25 (or, included in any Fest Pass)
for:        Anyone, regardless of prior experience, wanting to let go of unnecessary     movement tensions, habits and patterns.
more:   visit Cultivate on Eventbrite to reserve your spot!

Ten years ago, Philadelphia-based choreographer Katherine Kiefer Stark found herself sitting on an airplane sandwiched between two bulky men.  Elbows tucked tightly into her sides, knees pressed together to maintain some personal space from the men on either side who comfortably occupied the shared armrests, legs wide, loudly talking to each other and occasionally questioning her as she read.

Today, Katherine continues to be fascinated with the real and imagined boundaries of gender, which led to the creation of her ever-evolving solo Rounds.  A structured improvisation exploring how gender boundaries and expectations are constructed and the role Katherine plays in that construction, Rounds will be presented as part of Cultivate 2011

Katherine will also be teaching as part of the festival.  Her class, Initiation and Follow Through blends Kline Technique, Safety Release Technique, and release technique, and is an energetic exploration of movement from the inside out.  Emphasis is placed on the initiation of the movement and the path the various body parts take in space to discover how one’s own body moves within the movement.  Space is embraced through phrases that move in and out of the floor and carry the movers in and out of balance. Class begins quietly and gradually builds in complexity, culminating in a dynamic phrase.  Sleeves and kneepads or long pants are recommended.

class:    Initiation and Follow Through
time:    Friday, 8/19, 2-4 pm
place:   Great Hall, White Mountain School
cost:     $25 (or, included in Fest Pass)
for:       intermediate to advanced dancers
more:  visit Cultivate on Eventbrite to reserve your spot!

Philadelphia based choreographer Tori Lawrence finds inspiration in the architectural and environmental treasures hiding within her city, most recently in Founder’s Hall at Girard College, a Greek revival masterpiece built in the mid 19th century.  The time-worn building is the source of inspiration for her newest site-specific dance installation, Awakened Ruins which she will perform with her company at the Philly Fringe Festival in September.

Lawrence speaks poetically of her fascination with decay:

“Paint chipping from the walls, age-weathered windows, rusted flourishes, lumber fastenings, fallen pillars and painted domes that once were.  Historic relics of the past mystify and inspire me with their raw beauty—providing rich arenas for exploration.  Enthralled by the process of how architecture and sculpted spaces mature/age over time, I attempt to create a world that embodies such a process. If the aged crack in the cold marble floor could come alive, how would it move?  How can I embody the beauty of this decaying landmark? I envision the dancers being the floors, columns, arches and walls themselves.

Each place is like a human being.
Innards exposed,
dignity stripped.
Traces of life remain within these “fallen” buildings.
They once stood in glory,
but are now faded, overlooked, withdrawn.
If buildings could speak…“

Lawrence is joined by Emily Herchenroether, Ashley Lippolis, and Pamela Vail  (members of the Lawrence-Herchenroether Dance Company,)  to perform excerpts from the new work on Friday, August 19 as part of Cultivate.

The photographer in residence at the Bates Dance Festival for the past seven years, Fink will be photographing much of what happens this year at Cultivate.

“He doesn’t look like a dancer” was how the arts reporter of the Portland Press Herald began a profile article on dance photographer Arthur Fink.  But Fink’s interactions with dancers might truly be considered dances of their own.

Below is a description of the workshop Arthur will facilitate as part of this year’s Cultivate programming. You can see more of Arthur’s work throughout the Cultivate website, and here, on his own site:  ArthurFinkPhoto.Com

Seeing Dance Like a Photographer (Friday, August 19, time and location TBA)
This is about seeing dance  and understanding how it translates into still two dimensional images.  We won’t need or use a camera.  Instead, we’ll look together at several short dance pieces ­ deciding exactly which images might tell the story of that dance, seeing if there is one “iconic” image, etc.  The program would be useful not just for those who want to photograph dance, but also for dancers and choreographers to better understand how their pieces might best be photographed, or for anybody seriously interested in photography.  Its lesson is:  “Look before you photograph”.

In her 1940 essay-memoir “Paris, France,” Gertrude Stein wrote “Familiarity does not breed contempt, anything one does every day is important and imposing and anywhere one lives is interesting and beautiful. And that is all as it should be.”

In January 2011, Sarah Baumert went to live and dance in Paris for a period of five months. Sara Smith, who had been for some time obsessed with ideas about perception and automatic response interruption, sent Sarah a series of reading, writing, depicting and movement exercises and experiment instructions aimed at forming a familiar relationship to unfamiliar surroundings. “What she saw and how it felt” is a presentation of some of the processing of Sarah Baumert’s experiences of seeing and doing and of Sara Smith’s understandings and imaginings of those experiences.

Smith and Baumert will present what she saw and how it felt  as part of Cultivate 2011, at the White Mountain School on August 20, 2011.  For more information, and a complete schedule festival, please bookmark this site and check back for a full schedule coming soon!
You can help make Cultivate happen, by supporting our Kickstarter Campaign, and helping us spread the word!

Take a  moment and have a look…you’ll see photos of all the artists performing at Cultivate and hear beautiful music by Vicki Brown, from her album Seas and Trees…

Cultivate

August 19-21, 2011. Bethlehem, NH comes alive with dance!

Award-winning dance artists and musicians from the region and beyond NH, ME, VT, MA, NY, PA, IN, IA, WV, AZ and beyond gather in Bethlehem for a weekend of workshops, performances, discussions and social events.  Cultivate aims to nourish the community for contemporary dance and performance in the North Country.

A glimpse of some of the artists who will be showing new works/ offering workshops at Cultivate:

Analia Alegre-Femenias (Iowa/ Puerto Rico)
Katherine Keifer Stark (Philadelphia, PA)
Selene Colburn (Burlington, VT)
Paul Benney (Burlington, VT)
Pamela Vail (Lancaster, PA
Katherine Ferrier (Littleton, NH)
Vicki Brown (Tucson, AZ)
Amy Barr (Iowa City, IA)
Kathy Couch (Northampton, MA)
Rebecca Bryant (West Lafayette, IN)
Don Nichols (West Lafayette, IN)
Olase Freeman (Providence, RI)
Kathryn McNamara (Providence, RI)
Sara Smith (Amherst, MA)
Sarah Baumert (Boston, MA)
Kitty Clark (West Virginia)
Amanda Hamp (Decorah, IA)
Tori Lawrence (Philadelphia, PA)
Emily Anderson (North Conway, NH)
Arthur Fink (Portland, ME)