LITURGY | ORDER | BRIDGE

photo by Madyson “Bizzie” Frame

Liturgy|Order|Bridge is a participatory dance ritual that fuses sacred traditions and secular performance modalities to make porous the border between “audience” and “performance.” Calling on Black church traditions, a group of core performers bring guests into a collective score of movement, clapping, vocalization, and witnessing. A chorus of local movement artists and change makers guide guests into and through the liturgy performance and then into the rest of life through a visual and aural landscape that pushes and pulls ideas of faith, nature, fashion, and experimentation. Liturgy provides an avenue by which all participants of the encounter can identify and establish shared responsibilities among and to one another, which can then ripple out beyond the performance itself.

Liturgy|Order|Bridge asks:

• What might it mean to engage dance practice as faith practice, performance as communal ceremony, performance space as consecrated site, and audience engagement as a fellowship of shared witness, place, and inheritance?
• How might we establish shared (though distinct) responsibilities for the dynamism and consequence of the encounter between performer, performance and audience?
• What is the potential of an organized body of practitioners devoted to facilitating the threshold between performance and the rest of life?

“Liturgy|Order|Bridge” has been developed with support from Creative Capital, and from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ New Work New England program (whose support is made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Rescue Plan, Seedlings Foundation, the Fund for the Arts at NEFA, and individual donors). “Liturgy|Order|Bridge” was also incubated during a Pillow Lab Residency at Jacob’s Pillow, and is co-commissioned by the Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross.

PAST INSTALLATIONS:

LITURGY|ORDER|BRIDGE – BOWDOIN COLLEGE: BRUNSWICK, ME INSTALLATION

Friday November 15th and Saturday November 16th, 2024 at 7:30pm

Presented by Bowdoin College Department of Theater and Dance
Wish Theater, Memorial Hall
Brunswick, ME

LITURGY|ORDER|BRIDGE – PORTLAND, ME INSTALLATION

Thursday June 20th and Friday June 21st, 2024 at 7pm
Saturday June 22nd, 2024 at 2pm

Presented by SPACE Gallery at
Mechanics’ Hall
519 Congress Street
Portland, ME 04101

LITURGY|ORDER|BRIDGE – MIDDLETOWN INSTALLATION

Friday & Saturday, February 9 & 10, 2024 (7pm)
Saturday, February 10, 2024 (2pm)

CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT

photos above by Sandy Aldieri, Perceptions Photography, courtesy of the Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University.

HARTFORD PROTOTYPE PERFORMANCES

photos above by Madyson “Bizzie” Frame

IN PROCESS PHOTO DOCUMENTATION

photo credits below: #1 by Jim Coleman, all others in this section by Peter Raper.

photo credits below: #1 & #2 by Thomas Girior, #3 & 4 by Paul Bloomfield

photo credits below: by Olivia Moon

photo credits below: by Maritza Ubides

an early interation performed as part of the Bodies in Motion Festival at 33 Hawley Street (Northampton, MA) on January 19, 2020

choreographed and directed by Deborah Goffe in collaboration with the performers and early contributor Leslie Frye Maietta

performed by Deborah Goffe, Lauren Horn, and Arien Wilkerson

sound, fashions and set elements by Deborah Goffe

liturgical robe designed and constructed by Lee Forde

music by Julius Eastman, Kelsey Lu, Althea & Donna, Joyce Kilmer and Oscar Rasbach (performed by Aca Thompson), Arca, Kevin “GRAK” Hernández Rosa, and Nino Rota

*Additional photo and video documentation of in-process iterations
of the project are available upon request.

ABOUT THE ARTISTIC AND SUPPORT TEAM

CURRENT COLLABORATORS

DEBORAH GOFFE (director & collaborating performer) is a dance maker, performer, educator, and performance curator who cultivates environments and experiences through choreographic, design and social processes. Through Scapegoat Garden (a Connecticut-based creative engine) and other platforms, Deborah strives to forge relationships between artists and communities, helping people see, create and contribute to a greater vision of ourselves, each other, and the places we call home. Deborah’s performance works have been selected for performance in festivals and venues throughout the northeast United States, Italy and Cape Verde. She is currently a cohort member of New England Foundation for the Arts’ most recent iteration of its Regional Dance Development Initiative, New England Now. Deborah’s work is also driven by her enduring commitment to the support of vibrant local dance ecologies, and the role of curatorial practice in that process. A graduate of the University of the Arts (BFA, Modern Dance) and California Institute of the Arts (MFA, Dance Performance and Choreography), Deborah recently earned her MA in Performance Curation from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University in service to these commitments. This most recent research attends to the intersection of sustainable dance practice, locality, arts ecosystem formation, habits of perception, and black radical tradition(s). Together these commitments inform her work and teaching at Trinity College in Hartford, CT where she serves as Executive Director of The Austin Arts Center and Artist-In-Residence in Theater and Dance.

LAUREN HORN (collaborating performer) is a movement and text-based artist from Windsor, CT. She graduated from Amherst College with degrees in Psychology and Theatre and Dance. She is director of Lauren Horn// Subira vs. Movement, a movement and text based company dedicated to the exploration of identity and its relationship to technology.  Lauren has also performed with Deborah Goffe’s Scapegoat Garden, Dante Brown’s Warehouse Dance Company, Arien Wilkerson’s TNMOT AZTRO, Wendy Woodson, Katie Martin and Jennifer Nugent. While in the Five College Dance Consortium, Lauren has studied under Paul Matteson, Angie Hauser, Jim Coleman, Shayla Jenkins, Paul Dennis and Caroline Fermin. She has also performed in repertory works of The Bebe Miller Company, Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company, Delfos Danza Contemporanea and Gallim Dance Company. 

ABENA KOOMSON-DAVIS (music director & collaborating performer) is a performer, educator and wordsmith. Abena’s approach to life is polyphonic. Her poem, Blacksmith Orchestra is her anthem. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where she earned a B.A. in Liberal Arts, and also of Teachers College, Columbia University where she earned a Masters in Education Leadership. Abena was an original cast member of the hit Broadway musical FELA! which earned 3 TONY awards. She originated the role of Funmilayo Anikulapo Kuti in the Off-Broadway production at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Abena plays in several notable bands including the a cappella trio Saheli, the Cool Rulers, and Van Davis, where she has been the featured vocalist for over a decade, and had the honor of performing with Stevie Wonder.  Abena serves as founding musical director of the Women’s March Resistance Revival Chorus and has been featured on their debut album, This Joy. She currently serves as Ethics Chair of the middle school division at Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where she teaches ethics and social justice to middle & upper school students. Abena is married to world-renowned jazz trombonist Steve Davis.

ARIEN WILKERSON (collaborating performer) is a choreographer, dancer, video maker, director, producer, and installation artist. Born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Arien began their dance training under the tutelage of Jolet Creary, and has been a student at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The Artists Collective, Earl Mosley Institute of the Arts, and the Batsheva Dance Company’s “Gaga Intensive” in Tel Aviv, Israel. Arien is Founder and Artistic Director of TNMOT AZTRO, a collaborative multidisciplinary company working at the intersection of dance, performance art, installation, sound design for engagements in museums, galleries and site-specific locations. This work has been performed in venues throughout Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island and Philadelphia, and New York.

CHANTAL EDWARDS-MATTHEWS (threshold chorus collaborator) is a Connecticut-based movement artist. She frequently dances with Island Reflections Dance Theatre, and with bands, The Lost Tribe and Conga Bop. Chantal is also excited to be a collaborating performer in Lauren Horn//Subira vs. Movement’s current project, “Renaissance Gyal.”

OLANA FLYNN (creative producer) is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, curator and producer based in Holyoke, MA. She holds an MFA in Experimental Choreography from University of California, Riverside and a BA from Hampshire College. She is a founding member and co-director of LOCULUS a dance and performance collective that creates performance in non-traditional spaces, publishes The Loculus Journal, and directs The Loculus Studio in Holyoke. She has had the privilege of studying and performing with artists such as Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Luis Lara Malvacias, Paul Matteson, Jennifer Nugent, taisha paggett, Joel Smith, and Ni’Ja Whitson. Her choreography has been performed in New York, Philadelphia, Southern California, and throughout New England. Her photography has been featured in a number of zines and journals and has been exhibited at VSOP Projects in Greenport, NY. Olana has held faculty positions in the Dance Programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Springfield College, was a graduate teaching assistant at the University of California Riverside, and was most recently a guest artist at Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School. She currently teaches at Loculus Studios and the School For Contemporary Dance and Thought.

KATHY COUCH (lighting designer) has been designing and creating visual landscapes in performance and installation works for 20 years. Primarily working in the mediums of light and space, Couch has designed performances in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Australia, Armenia, Russia, Latvia, Serbia and throughout New England. Kathy Couch has recent and ongoing collaborations with a canary torsi, Adele Myers + Dancers, Sara Smith, Vanessa Anspaugh, Karinne Keithley Syers, Peter Schmitz, and The Architects. As a member of the a canary torsi creative team, Couch received a 2009 Bessie Award for Dark Horse/Black Forest and a 2012-13 Bessie Nomination for their 4-hour interactive performance installation–The People To Come. In Fall 2013, the archive component of The People To Come was featured in the exhibition Performance Archiving Performance, at the New Museum in New York. Kathy Couch formerly taught taught Lighting Design at Amherst College. She is currently a founding board member and President of the Northampton Community Arts Trust that seeks innovative ways to preserve arts space and is a co-director and steward of A.P.E. gallery in Northampton, MA.

MARITZA (RITZ) UBIDES (technical director) has been a longstanding collaborator with Scapegoat Garden as the company’s Technical Director and member of its Board of Directors from 2004-2012. She has been a vital member of the Privy performance salon production team since 2016. She served as Production Supervisor at Trinity College’s Austin Arts Center for several years, and now alongside her freelance work in sound design and technical direction, Ritz has recently launched her Connecticut-based pet service, Love at FURst Flight.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

AMISI NAZAIRE-HICKS (rehearsal manager/producer) is a Cambridge, MA native who graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2020. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a Bachelor ofArts in African American Studies. Amisi has trained in ballet, jazz, modern (Limon and Horton techniques), West African, Haitian folkloric, hip-hop, and house. She has performed work by Shakia Barron, Molly Christie Gonzalez, Deborah Goffe, “New Second Line” by Camille A.Brown and “A Choreographic Offering” by Jose Limon. Amisi danced and provided administrative support for Jenny Oliver’s Modern Connections Dance Theater from January 2021-May 2022 and recently performed in the premiere of “Concourse”, a collaborative project between Shakia Barron and Barbie Diewald, and“Genesis”, a new work by Barron. Amisi currently works as program assistant for the Haiti Cultural Exchange (Brooklyn, NY) and is earning a Master of Arts in Performing Arts Administration from New York University, expected May 2024.

DR. ALEXANDRA RIPP (creative producer) is a dramaturg, translator, writer, editor, curator, and arts administrator who is passionate about supporting artists develop ambitious interdisciplinary projects, particularly ones integrating local communities and institutions of higher education. She served as the inaugural Director of Five College Dance  (2019-2022) and as DisTIL (Discovery Through Iterative Learning) Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Carolina Performing Arts (2017-2019), where she oversaw the long-term residencies of artists Jonah Bokaer, Robin Frohardt, Toshi Reagon, Abigail Washburn and founded The Commons, an arts criticism-focused performance residency and festival. She also produced and curated the Ideas series of lectures, panels, and symposia at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (2012-2016). She has served as co-Associate Editor at Theater Magazine, editor/translator of the Chilean edition of the e-journal Imagined Theatres, and dramaturg at Yale School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theater and for independent theater and dance artists. Alex holds an MFA and DFA from the Yale School of Drama in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, and a B.A. in Spanish from Princeton University. Alongside her research in contemporary Chilean performance and memory politics, Alex translates Chilean shows for professional U.S. tours. Her translations and writing on performance have been published in Theater, PAJ: A Journal of Performing Arts, and Theater Journal and on Fusebox’s Written and Spoken platform.