Poland Performance Poster

Coffee in Poland

Performance, Malta Festival, Poznan, Poland

Performance, Malta Festival, Poznan, Poland

Performance, Malta Festival, Poznan, Poland

Performance, Malta Festival, Poznan, Poland

The Dolomites:

It is hard to explain what the experience of making dance in the Dolomites meant to all of us. The situation was perfect. We were housed in “rifugio” Vajolet which is perched at about 7,000 feet at the base of Punta Emma, a massive cliff two hours from Trento in Northern Italy and far from phone, fax, cars and noise. The small squeaky wooden beds took a little getting used to but any slight discomfort was far outweighed by the care given to us by our new friends who are the staff of the rifugio. The delicious meals fueled us well for our basic schedule; wake up, eat, do yoga on the outdoor yoga studio/helipad (until the helicopter occasionally swung by to remind us who was boss), create challenging site-specific dance, eat, continue to create dance, eat and drink wine, walk out under the stars and be amazed, sleep. Rinse and repeat. After the advance team of Thomas, Steve, myself, and the Italian guides spent two days choosing dance sites and rigging them, we lived this schedule for seven magical days. If I could choose a perfect situation as a mountain dance maker, this was it. In addition to the fact that the incubating environment was so supportive and fluid, the festival, Suonni Delle Dolomite, our presenter/hosts had done very thorough preparations and publicity. On the first day of the show, 1,700 people hiked into the mountains to see the work. The headlines of the reviews were “Project Bandaloop, Infinite Magic”  and “Project Bandaloop, Beyond Gravity”. Unfortunately the second show day was rained out (mountain climates will do that). We rallied and performed a small offering on and near the rifugio for the 300 die-hards who had hiked in despite the weather. In general, I thought, how could this experience have possibly been any better?

Well, it could have been better if the rock was truly solid. Steve Schneider noted that the high wall trio rig was the most difficult of his 15 years with the company. Solid rock would have made it better. The Dolomites are made of. . .  .well Dolomite, which is a kind of limestone. On the first day when I was exploring the details of where on the cliff we could actually dance, Steve, Thomas and the three (fantastic) Italian guides (Alberto, Antonio and Christoforo) found that there was only one “good” area about three hundred feet up the wall. I had wanted at least two on the cliff. Even the one area we found to be solid enough for our liking was not what you would call clean and solid. The “technical trio” as I called the three dancers who ascended their ropes 300 feet each day to rehearse, wore helmets throughout (as did the dancers in the other two lower cliff pieces). Every half an hour or so you would hear “ROCK!” as another small shower of golf-ball to baseball sized bits would rain down. Mostly this was a hazard for the base of wall, not the wall itself, but was unnerving, none–the-less.

We made dances in six locations; on the rifugio, on a large boulder, from two small cliffs (one duet and one solo), on a grassy meadow atop an island-like area, and high on the West wall across from Punta Emma. The show ran about an hour with announcements and bows and was received very warmly by the hardy mountain-tough audience.
We learned to yodel, we danced our hearts out, we got in really good shape, we laughed and argued and in addition to performing what I think was the most mature, evocative and varied mountain site-work in the company’s fifteen year history we managed to squeak in a few climbs, hikes and a several “via ferratas”.