'The Space Cadet' - Changing Landscapes

Almost two years after the original scheduling of the residency and one pandemic later, Athens - based choreographer Chloe Aligianni, dancer Angelos Apostolidis (Fuerza Negra) and film maker Xenia Tsilochristou, travel from Greece to North Michigan to revisit 'The Space Cadet' a dance work about a solitary cosmic journey that was created during the immobilising context of the imposed lockdowns. The original work was created for the very specific dimensions and limitations of a set/installation, which forms the world and travel vehicle of the astronaut. Aim of this residency is to allow the transition to a new place and landscape, and their own experience as travellers to inspire the re-imagining of the dance performance as a dance film. Throughout their stay the team will be revisiting movement material out of its original context, re-setting and filming fragments of the work in the frozen landscapes surrounding The Croft and allowing for potential new dramaturgical ideas to emerge out of the dialogue with the surrounding nature.

More about the theme of the work:

'The Space Cadet':

noun

1. a trainee astronaut
2. someone out of his mind, a lunatic

From our beginnings we are constantly in motion; growing, evolving, discovering. We transition from one state to another, seeking the ideal place and time, the perfect equilibrium, our “home”. “The Space Cadet” is a poetic journey into space, a cosmic quest of a solitary traveller, the astronaut. Audience and performer are constantly transported to new places, cover large distances and discover new frontiers, natural and artificial. They are constantly in motion even when in stillness. Our protagonist exists within a tailor made installation which sometimes feels like a home, vehicle, spaceship from the future, and at others like ‘prison’, game or his entire universe. Architectural lighting and soundscapes create transitions in space and time. Past, present and future merge.The work bridges space science and research with contemporary dance and hip hop culture. Choreographer Chloe Aligianni, borrows elements from astronaut training and reimagines space travel conditions. She converses with history and questions our relationship to environments, terrestrial and celestial. “The Space Cadet” is a pop up performance, with the set installed in both indoor and outdoor spaces and is being re-imagined as a dance film to be released in 2023. 

The Davis Sisters Accidentally Reply-All

Re: The Croft’s Rootstock will provide TDS, Joy and Alex Davis, with a non-product-driven moment to gather the multiple threads we have been unraveling since all our tours were canceled in early 2020. During this time together and in the spaciousness of the off-grid playground, we will take time to reimagine, not reply-all, recalibrate and rethink what it means to be collaborative dance performance makers.

The first week of their residency was a collaboration between Alex Davis and Jeremy Brothers. They explored a comedy and movement work that they hope to share in a lecture/artist talk format. While here Jermey also taught an improv comedy workshop to the CTAC students.

During Joy and Alex’s time together they explored processes and practices that they will continue to engage with as a part of Alex’s Master Thesis performance at Smith College. Part of the work involved branding, and the monetization of the body. To do this they found local stores and wore their branded clothing as a part of the performance. The movement that they explored was deeply integrated into the Horton Bay Schoolhouse space, as they were the first artists who were able to share their work there in person.

Julie Crothers & Co.

June 12th - 26th

Julie Crothers, with collaborators Greta Hadley and Ky Frances, spent this residency building the groundwork for a brand new work, Natura Morta. This work draws inspiration from the artists' varying experiences in visual art and live figure modeling. As movers, speakers, painters, sketchers, and writers, the 3 collaborators alternated between the roles of observer, creator, and responder as they explored the many ways of witnessing and being witnessed and the contast between moments when we are in control of how we are seen and moments when we allow ourselves to be seen as we are. In this beginning stage, equal attention was placed on stillness and deep noticing, both from an internal and external perspective, as well as active making and re-generating. As a reflection of the cyclical nature of life and growth and the shared desire to be less precious with what they create, nothing was kept or saved in its "final" form but rather, any by-products of the process were be "recycled". Whatever remained at the end of the day (ex. rehearsal notes, videos, audio recordings) was transformed into something else entirely and fed the next day's practice in new and exciting ways. Working together with shared values of trust and individual agency, each day was an opportunity to begin again, to notice first, to work with, not against, and to lead with intuition.

As a culmination of their practice Julie, Greta, and Ky shared their process in an informal sharing. We were able to witness the layers of connection, witnessing, and response. We got to watch how the different pieces fit together, what their weaving looked like in real time. How their intuitions conversed.

Bird bones/”You need some impact in there” consults disabled bodily structures and systems in pursuit of choreographic information. In this process, Kiera Bono and collaborator Ella Dawn W-S engaged in conversations with plants, non-human animals, and the wooden boards of the dance deck at The Croft Residency. Through multisensorial scores and choreographies of care that attended to weight-bearing, Kiera and Ella’s bodies will attempted to sense and hold themselves as their own dance decks in relation to each other and in relation to the wooden, non-human dance deck. They planned to tune into shared cooking, eating, and maintenance practices as crucial ways of knowing and dance-making. During their time here connection with the water became a daily ritual that fed their process.

They culminated their residency with an informal sharing at The Croft. As a part of their care practices they prepared GF kugel and zucchini bread for those who came to the sharing. They bottled the left over pasta water from the homemade pasta to offer as gifts to the land as a way to begin the sharing together. Their sharing took place in three sites on the property: the patio, the sculptural installation pit, and the dance deck. Their movement practice culminated in a pinecone toss/batting as a way to let go of things that no longer served us/pass through energy that we no longer wanted to hold.

Starship Somatics:

During the residency, Petra Kuppers will developed her Starship Somatics zoom series into new formats with the help of Charli Brissey. Starship Somatics is a disability culture movement form that engages our bodymindspirits as portals, as trance-mobiles that honor pasts and jet us toward speculative futures. In the residency, Petra was joined by Charli Brissey and Stephanie Heit, and together the three explored land/water edges, hydrophones, sonic installations and movement scores.

They shared their developed Starship Somatics experiential dance film via zoom and in person. The dance film will be submitted to dance film festivals in the experimental category. During the in person sharing of the Starship Somatics film Stephanie also shared a sound bath. She played her gong as a lead into the film experience. Stephanie and Charli also worked on a short dance film while in residence.

During her time at The Croft Sara will be explored care. She developed scores (frameworks) for participants to share care with themselves and others within an embodied/movement context. She also worked on choreography for another project. She shared a workshop with the public at Lavender Hill Farm on Thursday August 18th. During the workshop, Participants immersed themselves in 1.5hrs of dialogue, conversation, embodiment, and movement centered around exploring and experiencing a practice of care. Through group, partner, and individual movement-based activities, this workshop explored how to deepen our understanding of “care” and ability to act towards it.

Sofia + Em’s time at The Croft was spent exploring the GRIEF CAROUSEL as a video dance work. They were able to engage in research with lemons and the lens. They engaged with the landscape to help share their embodied eulogy. They shared a draft of their work at an informal sharing on the dance deck.

GRIEF CAROUSEL is an in-progress performance project performed and choreographed by Sofia Engelman + Em Papineau with original music by Albert Mathias and dramaturgical support by Sarah Zucchero. This work is an embodied eulogy which grapples with recent profound and potent personal and societal experiences of death, near-death, and loss. Object partners include 40-50 lemons (with which we ultimately make lemonade), a George Foreman grill, a notebook inherited from a mentor who recently passed (containing an unfinished dance which we re-enliven as a dance within a dance), and notes of remembrance (written by community members) which fall from the sky.