Scion 23
This year we are supporting 4 youth residents in their creative processes. Their project themes and intentions are shared below. We have three mentors for the Scion residents this year. They are listed after the residents.
Thalia Springborn
Thalia Springborn
Image Description: A dancer is centered in the image. They are in a 90 degree straddle pike. Supported by a fallen cedar tree. Their legs matching the lines of the cedar tree and branches that support their hands. They look off into the distance. They have a light complexion and long blonde hair that is moving in the breeze from the left side of their body to the right. They are wearing a khaki slack and a white tank top.
Theme Movement into stillness, stillness into movement
Intentions Playing with small or no movement and also rapid movement
Louis Millard
Louis Millard
Image Description: A dancer is centered in the image in front of a glass block wall with white grout. The dancer stands on on a cement sill. The dancer is in a hinge, on their toes with their hips reaching forward. Their body in a straight line from knees to head. Their right arm reaches out in front of them, with a soft hand and wrist, perpendicular to their upper body. Their left arm bends behind them, so that the left hand can cradle the head. The dancer is in old basketball shoes with read laces, white socks, garbage bag pants, and a white short sleeve shirt. They have a light complexion and short blond hair.
Theme Expansion
Intention To expand upon the smallest movement into a full piece of work
Sarah Jaskowski
Sarah Jaskowski
Image Description: A dancer is centered in the image. They stand on top of a small dune. a large body of water and a shoreline in the distance. They are standing in an arabesque. Their right leg at about a 100 degree angle to their left standing leg. Their right arm is extended in a parallel line to her right leg. They have an arched neck and looks towards the sky. They have a light complexion and long hair that is pulled back. They are wearing wearing white sneakers, white sweat pants, and a white tank top. They have a bracelet on their right wrist.
Theme Elements of growth
Intentions To create a space where others can share and be vulnerable while exploring individuality and communality
Sakura Springborn
Sakura Springborn
Image Description: A dancer is centered in the image. They stand on an exposed root of a cedar tree that is part of a stand of cedars. The cedars are all growing out of a dune. They stand in a backbend with an arched neck. Their left arm extends forward from the shoulder and has a fist with a closed hand. It leans against one of the cedar trees. Their right arm is down by their side with their pinky resting against their outer thigh. They are wearing a boot cut khaki pants and a white tank top. They have a light complexion and long blonde hair that is down. It falls behind their head as if the picture caught them just as they reached the back bend.
Theme Memory: forgetting and remembering
Intensions To express through screen dance, the feeling of when memories of the past surface in your mind, whether it brings joy or grief
Scion Mentors
Mauriah Donegan Kraker
Mauriah Donegan Kraker PC: Natalie Fiol
Image Description: A person seen in the center of a room in the lower half of the image. The light source comes from out of frame to the right of the picture, causing the left half of the back wall to be lit and leaving the right half in darkness. The room has cement-colored flooring and behind the person is a wall of medium size windows and a line of chairs pushed against the wall. Behind the person and to the left of the image is a large collection of whole oranges sprawled along the floor in no particular order. The person is wearing mustard yellow pants, a light brown and cream colored long sleeve top tucked into their pants with a looser fitting yellow-brown long sleeve layered on top. They are on their knees facing a diagonal toward the right of the image. Their knees are separated and they are leaning slightly toward their left leg. They have a light complexion. Their reddish-brown hair is short and is mid hair-whip, flowing behind their head on their left side. Their hands are extended outward at a low diagonal, their fingers reaching toward the floor as they gaze downward toward their right fingertips.
Mauriah Donegan Kraker is a midwesterner, a collaborative performance maker, a long-distance walker primarily invested in slow travel: walking around the block and through the city as a means of attending to the choreographic unfolding of time cycles in the body + land. She has led folks on site walks through the Italian Alps, sound walks in southern France, and outings to highway underpasses, prairies and theatres in the Midwest that culminate in participatory scores and dance performance. Mauriah is a MacDowell Fellow for her duet work alongside her collaborator, Leah Wilks. Together they function as the duo L+M - inhabiting the roles of co-choreographers/performers/sound creators. Mauriah teaches movement practices in the Theatre Arts department at Lawrence University, her focus being collaboration, movement that is accessible to all, valuing difference, and embodied practices of place, both internal and external.
Lineage: Mauriah thinks of her time working alongside Deb Loewen, Jennifer Monson and Kirsti Simpson. She thinks of all the folks from the university of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign during her mfa years, her time at Taipei National University of the Arts, and conversations with people and place: fishing villages in Costa Rica, mountains in New Mexico, cliff walking in Portugal, midnight forest walking in Wales, prairies and Walmarts and sidewalks in the states, The Croft Residency.
Donna Costello
Donna Costello PC: Julie Lemberger
Image Description: A person is centered in the image. They are in a room that is entirely white, with a rolling white wall in the background of the left side of the image. Ins the background of the right 2/3rds of the image are white and gold papers crinkled and piled along the back wall. The person is balancing on the balls of their feet in a flat back with their upper body parallel to the floor. Their arms are spiraling with inward rotation from the shoulders, so that the back side of their hands are meeting. Their forearms rest on their back. The left palm can be seen. The person’s gaze is slightly ahead of them. They have a light complexion and long dark hair with a few streaks of grey. They are wearing white tights and a top of crinkled white paper.
Rooted in dance, Donna Costello is performer, choreographer and educator based in New York City (Lenapehoking). Centering the body as a deep vessel of expression, she commits herself to fostering community through investigating our relationships to space, nature, history and our complex world. At the core of her work she examines constructs of femininity connecting it to themes of power, beauty, and identity.
As a performer, she has worked with inspiring artists performing in apartments, public parks, historic landmark buildings, pools, fields and stages in the U.S. and abroad. Recent projects include works by choreographers Nicole Mannarino, Carrie Ahern, jill sigman/thinkdance, Kelly Bartnik, Vicky Shick, filmmaker Darryl Hell, visual artist Nick Cave, and long time collaborator, theater artist Jennifer Sargent. Her choreographic collaborations have been presented at Dixon Place, chashama, Triskelion, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Flea Theater, Roulette, Estrogenius Festival, Women-in-Motion, Definitive Figures Festival in New Orleans (Co-Creator & Producer) and Performatica in Mexico. She champions the authentic voice of young people facilitating in NYC public schools for Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Park Avenue Armory, and as a dance curriculum specialist for Juilliard’s Global K-12 Programs and Initiatives. donnacostello.org
Benjamin Cheney
Benjamin Cheney PC: Breckyn Dávila Drescher
Image Description: A person is centered in the image. They can be seen standing looking slightly up and to their left. They are wearing an all blue outfit that is wet from just emerging from the water. They have a light complexion, short dark hair, and a full dark beard. They stand on a sandy beach with small waves breaking behind them. The water transitioning from clear to a turquoise of in the distance. The sky a slate blue with grey cloud cover.
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. This is his 6th year as Artistic Director of The Croft.
Lineage: Ben’s love of movement was fostered through his time at a K-12 integrated arts charter school. He curiosity and love of movement continued under the instruction of Heather Raue at the Crooked Tree School of Ballet. His embodiment practice continues to grow from the roots that were established by time with Anna Halprin, Daria Halprin, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Nancy Stark Smith, and countless instructors from Tamalpa, Moveus, SOMA, and Leben Nuova. He recognizes the land that has shaped him. The lakes and rolling hills of northern Michigan. The fjords of Norway, The streets of Chicago, New York, Paris, and the foothills and northern slope of Mt. Tamalpias.