Scion 22

This year we have The Croft is grafting two Scions Amelie Eloyse-Ann Hanson & Nancy Hohlbein, and Leif Van Horn. They will be under the mentorship of Mauriah Donegan Kracker, Deborah Lohse, and Benjamin Cheney.

Amelie Eloyse-Ann Hanson & Nancy Hohlbein

Amelie and Nancy on the Petoskey Breakwall.
Two dancers pose together with one leaning back in the others arms. The dancer who is leaning back is wearing a flesh colored dress with brown and creme polk-a-dots. Their right arm is elongated completing a line from the shoulder with a softened wrist. Their left are is wrapped around the waist of the other dancer with whom they are making eye contact. The supporting dancer is a wearing a red and white floral dress and has a large rainbow hoop earring. They smile at the dancer whom they are holding with their right arm at the waist and left arm beneath the shoulders. Both dancers are in point shoes on concrete. Deep blue water, a thin strip of dark green land, and a light blue sky with whispy cirrus clouds are in the background.

Proposal Themes

Amelie: Being vulnerable, entrusting in those you love.

Nancy: Protest, Activism, and Self-Expression

Proposal Intensions

Amelie: To create a work (dance/movement)that breaks the limits of trust in yourself and another. I want to explore creating new positions and shapes with a duets body. I want to work with a partner to stretch the limits of fear and control the limits of connection.

Nancy: To explore how my ability to dance can help the world around me and be a form of protest, activism, and self expression

Leif Van Horn

Proposal Themes

Trees, growth, how do trees communicate, change

Proposal Intensions

I would like to explore the idea of trees, growth and how they change with seasons. Do trees talk to each other? Trees are so solid and rooted but they bend and move.

Mauriah Donegan Kraker

PC: Paul Mitchell
Four dancers move in a space with a curved ceiling. In the right of the image is a black wall with two lights on it pointing towards the camera, The curved wall/ceiling is mostly white with some exposed wooden beams or trusses. At about 9 ft there is a string of what appear to be brown paper bags hanging along the wall/ceiling. All of the dancers are in solid colors with their pants and their tops differing in hues. One dancer is in the background and near the black back wall on the left side of the image. Three of the dancers are clustered in the foreground on the right side of the image. The dancer in the front of the cluster is the only mover in focus. She wears a purple 3/4 sleeve shirt and orange pants. She is stepping forward with her right leg. Her torso is spiraling toward her left leg with her right arm crossing over her left. The right arm is slightly more bent. The left arm is slightly more extended with a slight break in the wrist, and a floral tattoo of the forearm. Both her palms face upwards. Her head and neck continue the spiral of the torso, the chin towards the left shoulder. With the angle of her head she appears to be looking either behind her or to the floor. The dancers hair is dark with bangs, with the rest of her hair falling about to her jawline.

Mauriah Donegan Kraker (she/her) is a midwesterner, a collaborative performance maker, a walker, improviser, teacher. She is an advocate for slow travel: walking around the block and through the city as a means of attending to choreographic unfolding of time cycles in the body + land. Mauriah’s background in athletics (competing as an Olympic-level athlete, touring with Pilobolus Dance Company, and being raised in a family that walked and biked everywhere) is a driver in the creation of physical works that live somewhere in the realms of dancing and walking. She has led folks on site walks through the Italian Alps, sound walks in southern France, and outings to highway underpasses and prairies in the Midwest- the walks culminating in participatory scores and dance performance. She currently teaches movement practices in the Theatre Arts department at Lawrence University and writes and makes dances about place and endurance with her long-distance collaborator, Leah Wilks.

Deborah Lohse

PC: Chia Messina
A woman is in the right side of the frame of the picture in front of a white backdrop. A light source shines on her right side. She is dressed in a white crew neck top shirt and black leather jacket with the right lapel over the left. Her posture is leaning and turning slightly to the right with her neck and head fully vertical. Her right arm rests on her abdomen while her left arm rests at her side. Her face appears to be caught in a laugh. Her smile extremely large. red lipstick accented by bright white teeth. Her hair is dark brown in a bowl cut or undercut style. She wears two crystal orb earrings.

Born and raised in California, DEBORAH LOHSE is a comedian, dancer and choreographer living and working in New York City. Her work has been presented in theaters, public spaces and festivals including DANCE NOW Joe’s Pub, American Dance Festival, Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival, United Solo Theater Festival, La Mama Moves, Winter Garden at Brookfield Place and The Stonewall Inn. She has received commissions from Women In Motion, Mantra Percussion, SUNY Purchase, DANCE NOW and Island Moving Company as well as artist residencies from The Yard, Marble House Project, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Acadia Summer Arts Program and SILO. As a performer, Lohse has worked with theater directors Michael Preston, Barbara Karger and Anne Kaufman, visual artists Suzanne Bocanegra and Paulina Olowska and choreographers Monica Bill Barnes, Cori Olinghouse, Doug Elkins, Katy Pyle/Ballez, David Parker/The Bang Group, Ashley R.T. Yergens and Lohse’s collaborative dance comedy crew LMnO3 (Lohse, Marquis and Oakley). She currently performs with Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and as her alter ego indefatigable cabaret persona TruDee.

Benjamin Cheney

PC: Holly Jones
A dancer on the right side of the image in a vertical striped purple and white dress shirt with rolled up sleeves and brown pants reaches towards the left side of the image with their right hand. Their body making a crescent moon shape as the left arm holds on to a white post in counterbalance to the reach of their right arm. Their head and neck are in hyperextension. Both the beard and the head hair are dark brown. A subtle glow of sun catches the top of the head. Behind the dancer tall grass and apple trees can be seen. The apples on the apple tree are underripe. In the foreground, on the right of the image, in front of the dancer a portion of a wooden cube with through bolts and corner bracing can be seen.

Benjamin Cheney is a performer and designer from Northern Michigan. He is the founder and Artistic Director of The Croft Residency. His personal dance practice centers on moving meditation, with a focus on somatic, intentional, and metaphoric improvisational movement. He uses the tools of Body Mind Centering (BMC) and the Tamalpa Life Art Process (TLAP) as lenses and languages to engage in his explorations and facilitations. He is a level 2 Graduate from Tamalpa and has completed the BMC SME (Somatic Movement Educator) courses. His performance experience includes the New York premier of Bienvenue, with Company SBB in New York in May 2017, The Nutcracker with Crooked Tree School of Ballet in 2018, and a performance at Mass MoCA with Dance The Yard on Valentine’s Day 2019. He worked at The Yard as the Production associate, in 2016, facilitating the onsite needs of incoming artists in residence for performance. He was also an artist educator while at the yard, facilitating classes in schools, senior homes, and at community venues. This is his 5th year as Artistic Director of The Croft. This summer he will be running The Croft Residency and subcontracting tech at The Great Lake Center for The Arts (GLCFA).