Description to come

    October 24, 2002
On the farm

View 56K | View Broadband
We took an old yellow school bus with two classes from the secondary school from Guanabo out to one of the natural areas that Programa Sibarimar is rehabilitating and conserving. We started with a workshop in the grass at the edge of the mangrove swamp and then danced our way out towards the beach. The students responded with great questions and comments. I was constantly struck by the respect and enthusiasm the Cuban students brought to their watching.  After the performance they talked about setting up a club to continue to develop an art and environmental exchange. On our way back to town we stopped at Sibarimar’s new visitor center that is currently under construction with the help of an Italian foundation. It will allow for much broader programs for the organization and has a small research station.

    October 23, 2002
Performance: Rincon de Guanabo

View 56K | View Broadband
Our wonderful host, Pedro Morales arranged for us to do an exchange with Instituto Superior de Arte(ISA).  We took two of their classes. In the first one we learned dances from a French-Haitian tradition. In the second class we learned dances from Santeria. The energy from the drumming, singing and dancing filled the room with such a stimulating vibration we didn’t want to stop.
In the last half-hour we did a brief BIRD BRAIN workshop which ended with each person responding to the dance of the person before them. It was fascinating to share the breadth of our styles and personalities in this way.

    October 15, 2002
Folkloric dance class with students in Habana, Cuba

View 56K | View Broadband
This was our last performance in the United States. This magic little place on the Miami River was an ideal spot to discuss the dynamic role of the river for various communities in the metropolitan area such as the shipping industry, the developers, and the resident human and wildlife communities. It is amazing to see the tiny tugs maneuver the huge ships through the narrow river. It feels like you could reach out and touch the boats. The river is still home to manatees and many other forms of wildlife. The panel discussion here included a tug boat captain, and representatives from the Miami River Commission, the Center for Arts Learning, Everglades National Park, the Sierra Club and the Everglades Defense Council.

    October 12, 2002
Performance: Point Park, Spring Garden, Miami

View 56K | View Broadband
Earlier in the day we taught workshops at the Museum to 180 students from an elementary school in Little Havana. The workshops took place in an outdoor area, which is home to most of the museum’s raptors. The students had an opportunity to not only experience their own kinetic sense of navigation and migration but also to see these amazing creatures up close. I would say that 80% of our students came from countries in Latin and Central America. So they also brought their own personal histories of migration to the experience.
Our performance finished just as it was getting dark and was followed by a panel in the auditorium with a power point presentation of the museum’s own osprey research, information about the Everglades National Park and various other conservation issues pertinent to Florida’s environment.

    October 12, 2002
Performance: Miami Museum of Science

View 56K | View Broadband
We worked for two days with the students at Jane Edwards. The first day we did a workshop and performance introducing the basic concepts of BIRD BRAIN. On the second day we learned basic compass, skills, navigated our way through the schoolyard, drew maps of our journeys and made dances from the maps. The students also shared with us some of their ‘step’ dancing. I really enjoyed working with this school. My students showed me a bird’s nest in the woods and ants crawling under the bark of a log and some delicate dancing. We all ended up with a larger sense of how we move through the world.

    October 2, 2002
Workshop at Jane Edwards school in Edisto Beach, SC

View 56K | View Broadband
The water was irresistible. It is so warm in the south and I found I had to give into it. There was a huge amount of energy coming from the waves. The wind is a constant and strong presence. I wanted to move against that energy with resistance-making sound, compressing and pushing out my own energetic state to mix up with the beach’s. The sand and the water become very forgiving to movement and with eyes closed the water and the air blur, the movement of one and the other and me merge in and out of each other. I feel tiny in the midst of this environment but also huge in the depth of my own inner location that radiates out into the world.

    September 30, 2002
Authentic movement at Pea Island- research day

View 56K | View Broadband
We pulled ourselves out of bed and arrived at the beach as the light began to simmer in the East over the ocean. Students from William Stott’s environmental studies program at the UNC and various others  from Pocosin Arts straggled across the dunes to join us for a dawn movement workshop. As the sun rose above the ocean we began moving in the sand, against the wind, tracing each other’s bodies and movement. At the end of the workshop everyone ended up in the water, its strong current energizing and powerful.

    September 25, 2002
Dawn Workshop, Outer Banks, NC

View 56K | View Broadband
At our second performance at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary two ospreys flew overhead as we were performing. We were in a still moment in the dance when our focus moves out to the distance. It sent chills through me to raise my eyes to the sky and see the familiar shape of the ospreys above me. Our performance was preceded by a live raptor demonstration. In the video we are dancing along the Lookout trail which has spectacular hawk viewing from the ridge. While we were there they hit the 10,000 mark in their count of broad winged hawks.

    September 21, 2002
Performance: Hawk Mountain Sanctuary

View 56K | View Broadband
At our second performance at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary two ospreys flew overhead as we were performing. We were in a still moment in the dance when our focus moves out to the distance. It sent chills through me to raise my eyes to the sky and see the familiar shape of the ospreys above me. Our performance was preceded by a live raptor demonstration. In the video we are dancing along the Lookout trail which has spectacular hawk viewing from the ridge. While we were there they hit the 10,000 mark in their count of broad winged hawks.
.

    September 14, 2002
Performance: The Wetlands Institute

View 56K | View Broadband
Peter Mott noted after our performance that we had been observed by a hairy woodpecker, a green heron, a night heron, several mallards and had been continuously accompanied by the song of a starling. He also told us that often migrating birds recruit local birds and he asked our audience if they noticed our recruitment. The panel included a fascinating presentation by Mitch Hartley about migratory bird conservation.

    September 6, 2002
Performance: Prospect Park Audubon Center, Brooklyn NY

View 56K | View Broadband
Here we danced from the Patagonia Store on Wooster Street to The River Project on the Hudson. We transitioned back into the urban environment through the energy of our audience. It took us almost two hours to complete our migration and we had some loyal followers. The panel discussion afterwards included presentations by Rebekah Creschkoff and Peter Mott.

    September 5, 2002
Performance: New York City

View 56K | View Broadband
Fibrous and soft
Far away I had looked at a small section of the marsh where the colors shifted from dark to light green and from red to light yellow. They looked soft and mushy. I wanted to affiliate myself with them, but was too far away and the reference left me fairly quickly.  The grass at my feet growing directly out of sand and poky and dry was then my focus. Again I wanted to be like it and I felt I had fibrous yet delicate waves of emotion that went well with it. My feet looked deep into the sand for security and sense of place, location. I was influenced also by the capoeira Horacio and I had done the previous day. I was grounded with my lower body and poky with my arms and head. I was aware of being watched and also comfortable in having my own space for expression since we were starting the score with solos. The horizon, looking out, to the marsh on one side, close and far away, the memory of the bay on the other, me up on the dune coming down to meet Morgan.

    September 2, 2002
Alejandra solo at Sandy Neck Dunes, Cape Cod

View 56K | View Broadband
We performed after a pancake breakfast organized by the Friends of Shawme-Crowell State Forest. Our audience was a mix of families, older folks and young campers. We had a brief discussion afterwards about sound. One person felt very strongly that we should have some recorded sound. Someone else completely disagreed and had really enjoyed how his sensitivity to the sounds of the environment were heightened by our performance. Later that day we saw our first osprey out at Boardwalk Beach.

    September 1, 2002
Performance: Shawme-Crowell State Forest

View 56K | View Broadband
This dance comes from a rehearsal at Boardwalk Beach, Sandwich, Mass.  All of us, in turn, created solos at this estuarine place; the intersection of dunes, water, rocks and dry tan grasses.  Each mover navigated the soft gray stones and the moist sandy ground, framed by water dancing, reflecting a dappled light.  The landscape was immaculate – a benevolent horizontal thrust in the background that only supported us as we each moved through the score of responding to the environment, building a location, responding to the environment, building a location. As I waited for my turn, last in the line of four, the relationship between the place and the pristine dances infused me with impulses, making me eager to begin my own communion.  -- Morgan Thorson

    August 30, 2002
Morgan solo at Boardwalk Beach on Cape Cod

View 56K | View Broadband
Rehearsal

    August 29, 2002
Rehearsal: Coast Guard Beach, Sandwich MA

View 56K | View Broadband
This is our second performance at Wells NERR. It was followed by an excellent panel discussion on ospreys.

    August 25, 2002
Performance at Wells, Maine

View 56K | View Broadband
This was our first rehearsal of the tour.

    August 23, 2002
Rehearsal on the beach at Wells, Maine.

View 56K | View Broadband

Wells, ME Cape Cod, MA Bronx, NY New York, NY Brooklyn, NY Easton, PA Kempton, PA Oceanville, NJ Stone Harbor, NJ Columbia, NC Outer Banks, NC Charlston, SC Edisto Island, SC Sapelo Island, GA Darien, GA Miami, FL Cuba Venezuela

2013 BIRDBRAIN DANCE. All rights reserved.