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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Colors Shine in Environmental Dance

A rainbow of cloth ribbons dotted the trees around Mead Chapel this past Thursday, Oct. 8. A group of students and faculty paced around very slowly, trancelike, intertwining the ribbons and wrapping them around the trees. Passersby could not help but stop and stare at this mesmerizing first performance of Garden by the Dance Company of Middlebury and guest performers.

Garden is a site-adaptive performance that honors and celebrates a specific place by creating a visual installation within it,” Assistant Professor of Dance and developer of the performance Tzveta Kassabova said.

The work was originally created for an art festival in Reston, Virginia in 2012. Twelve Middlebury students participated in its debut performance last year at Judson Church in New York City. This year, Garden served as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Middlebury’s Environmental Studies program.

The dancers ranged greatly in age and performance experience, with faculty, staff, guest artists and students performing side by side. Kassabova planned on integrating a third grade class from Ripton Elementary School into the Friday performance of the show, but unfortunately, that night’s performance was rained out. She noted that the children would have “introduced freshness, wonder and playfulness to the work.”

The first performance of the half-hour show began at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday night. Tied around each tree in the vicinity of Mead Chapel was a brightly-colored ribbon, with the remainder of the ribbon rolled into a ball on the ground. Soft, repetitive and trancelike music emerged from a set of speakers connected to a computer at the crest of the hill. As the performance began, each dancer, wearing one or more flower-shaped felt patches, picked up one of the ribbon balls and set forth, moving slowly and deliberately toward another tree. As the work progressed, the dancers ever-so-carefully wrapped their ribbons around other tree trunks, tree branches, lampposts and even other ribbons. Within ten minutes, almost all of the ribbons had been wrapped around at least two trees. Apart from a minute or two of sitting on the ground, all of the performers were constantly moving, evoking a sense of perpetual evolution in the piece.

Although a few audience members had intentionally come to see the performance, most others were simply passersby drawn in by the bright, eye-catching ribbons woven among the trees as they headed to and from an event occurring simultaneously inside Mead Chapel as part of the inauguration celebrations for new President of the College Laurie L. Patton. Many visitors, students and faculty members stopped at least briefly, swelling the ranks of the Garden audience.

Near the end of the performance, the dancers began to gradually edge their way back up the hill toward Mead Chapel. Once they reached the top, each dancer unpinned their felt flower and gently handed it to an audience member.

“The main purpose [of Garden] was building community,” performer Chelsea Colby ’17.5 said. “Handing out flowers was our way of branching the connection out beyond ourselves. When I handed off my flower to a woman, she said I made her day, and I smiled at her. That was a really positive outcome for me.”

Kassabova explained that this exchange was a key element of the performance.

“I always like giving a small present to the audience as part of the work,” she said. “The little flower in their hands serves as a reminder of a wonderful day spent surrounded by art.”

Marc Lapin, Associate Professor in Science Instruction in Environmental Studies and a participant in the dance, passionately expressed his enjoyment for the performance.

“For me, it was a moving meditation with a community aspect,” he said. “The dancers were definitely responding to each other. For me, it was a very meditative dance in which we interacted with the ribbons, the trees and the ground beneath us. I had a great time dancing in the performance.”

The Thursday night performance of Garden was truly impressive. Good weather and good timing allowed a large number of campus residents and visitors to appreciate the dance. Unfortunately, a few unforeseeable distractions interfered with the performance somewhat. The noise from trucks installing the stage for Sunday’s inauguration ceremony competed with the show’s music for the first few minutes of the piece. In addition, some technical difficulties with the computer playing the music meant that computer notification sounds interrupted through the speakers a handful of times over the course of the performance.

Nevertheless, the event was highly successful overall. The bright ribbons and flowers were visually striking, helping Garden to communicate its core environmental message to a large audience. With a central site location and enthusiastic dancers, the dance piece established itself this weekend as a memorable and engaging part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Environmental Studies program.


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