Rachel BoggiaRachel
Boggia

Avalanche: Process, Performance, Pedagogy (2011-2013)

College-level dance and theater teachers have long made the case for performance as a mode of investigation, a way of knowing… that our students, our audiences, and we ourselves find these modes of learning and of expression enlightening, critical, engaging, essential to truth-seeking and self-knowing…. Clearly, Colby and Bates are leaders of this pack…”-Lynn Matluk Brooks, Thinkingdance.net

Role: Principle Investigator, Performer, Producer Description: Five faculty from the Theater and Dance Departments of Bates and Colby colleges explored dance-theater hybridity by commissioning and performed in an original evening length piece from Headlong Dance Theater and exploring curricular ramifications of hybrid practices. The piece toured to Philadelphia, New York City, Portland, Maine, New London, Connecticut, and Lewiston, Maine between 2013-2013.
Quick Links (also embedded in project narrative); performance excerpts ; full performance at Danspace Project
Please scroll to bottom of the page for supplemental materials, including grants, reports, reviews, and research presentations.

Project Narrative

The first major research project that I initiated at Bates was Avalanche, an original evening-length dance-theater performance commissioned and performed by faculty from Bates and Colby and directed by Headlong Dance Theater (HDT) of Philadelphia. The project took form in two phases: Phase 1 was the research, development and first performances of Avalanche, supported by  a CBB Melon Grant of $41,618. Phase 2 was a tour of Avalanche and research presentations on findings, supported by the Bates Faculty Development Fund.

Phase 1 Description 

In 2011, five Theater and Dance faculty from Colby and Bates Colleges (Carol Dilley, Michael Reidy, and I from Bates and Annie Kloppenberg and Todd Coulter from Colby) were awarded a CBB Mellon Faculty Enhancement Grant of $41,618 for Process, Performance, Pedagogy: Perspectives on Hybridity in Dance and Theater. I authored the grant, along with Annie Kloppenberg and Todd Coulter. This project explored possible meeting grounds in dance and theater creative processes and pedagogy through the creation of an evening-length original hybrid performance, Avalanche, as well as public discussions and master classes around the topic. The faculty were performers in a comprehensively collaborative process led by the four artists that make up HDT: David Brick, Amy Smith, Andrew Simonet, and Mark Lord. During the first year of the project, we met with HDT four times: once in Philadelphia, once at Colby, and twice at Bates. Though focused on rehearsals, the residencies were also opportunities for HDT to interface with the campus communities.

Outcomes of Phase 1

Phase 2 Description

Given the interest of colleagues and our continued fascination with the project, the group of faculty researchers desired to continue to research and disseminate the project through further performances. In 2013, we were granted $25,112 from Bates Faculty Development Grant for Avalanche on the Road, which allowed us to host HDT once more to revise Avalanche and tour the performance and discussions to professional and academic venues. We invited guest scholars to host these discussions when possible in order to help deepen the discussion of our research.

Outcomes of Phase 2

 Above:Full video of Avalanche at Danspace Project in New York.

General Outcomes

Why this project mattered to us as faculty

It is no easy matter being a full time faculty artist in Maine where, particularly in dance, you can count your colleagues on one hand. To collaborate in a group of five faculty from Colby and Bates and four colleagues from Headlong Dance Theater and Bryn Mawr and show get feedback from peers and colleagues in five different arts environments was of incalculable value. Avalanche not only invigorated us as individuals, moving us out of our own work habits but is but provided the shared experience of arriving collectively at places we could never have gone alone. The piece created valuable dialogue with peer faculty artists who also balance their institutional lives with their art and could engage with the material we presented on multiple planes at once. We created a performance piece that pushed us as performers, informed us as performance makers, and inspired us as teachers. Through our shared experience and the exploration engendered in this process we also have built lasting professional relationships that will affect not only our profession external work but also has a great impact on our institutional capacity.

Perhaps one of the most influential aspects of Avalanche for me was developing and performing it over several years.  Improvisation was an important part of the rehearsal and performance process.  Although I had long seen performance as a research method, working on Avalanche gave me my first long-term experience with the sense that I learned something different in performance than I did in other ways of knowing.  This became the basis of scholarly research with Annie Kloppenberg as well as the basis of another performance research project, Foreword/Afterword.

In addition to these outcomes, collaborations outside of the Avalanche group benefitted from the work done within the group. In short term 2012, the Department of Theater and Dance integrated new ideas about theater and dance collaboration coming from artist in residence Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Headlong Dance Theater into the curriculum. With the support of the department, I collaborated with Senior Lecturer Kati Vescey to create a Short Term course S26 developing an original dance-theater performance from the poetry of Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The design of the course and my creative process was influenced by my experience working on Avalanche. Together with our students, we created the short evening of multimedia dance theater performance Home, Among Other Transitional Places, which is described in my teaching statement. In June of 2013, Vescey and I gave a presentation at the International Conference on Arts in Society in Budapest, Hungary: Artists in Residency: Two Different Models, in which we analyzed and the design and impact of the artistic residencies Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Headlong Dance Theater at Bates College (see supporting documents).

Performance Listing and Reviews

Note: In describing this project, I am quoting liberally from the 2013 “Avalanche on the Road” faculty development grant report I co-authored with Carol Dilley and Michael Reidy, which is included in supporting documents.