Author: Deborah Goffe

Deborah Goffe is a dance maker, performer, educator, and performance curator who cultivates environments and experiences through choreographic, design and social processes. Since its founding in 2002, Scapegoat Garden has functioned as a primary vehicle and creative community through which she forges 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.

Exciting Re-emergences … Why Wait?

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… and we’re back!  When last I wrote back in February, I was on vacation with my bestie ruminating about all things retreat, faith and reciprocity.  Well, that turned out to be a lengthy and fruitful meditation because, in the months between that time and this, everything has changed!  I’ve wanted to share the crazy transformation of my life as it has all been unfolding, but with so many moving parts, I have had to hunker down and direct my focus in a BIG way. So … where do I start?  Well, back in March I accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Modern/Contemporary Dance at Hampshire College in… read more

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Co-operative

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[ This page is intended to serve as an archive for The Invisible City Project website. While this information is not up to date, it is my hope that its contents continue to provide a point of entry.] The Invisible City Project Co-operative provides a framework for administering the existing Invisible City Project, by putting its programming directly into the hands of the community for which it was created in the first place.  Under the leadership of Arien Wilkerson and Rebecca Puretz as facilitators, we seek to provide opportunities to trade labor and community outreach efforts for rehearsal space, creative programming and performance opportunities. By… read more

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In the RAW: an Alternative for Hartford

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I. Prologue “The past is prologue.” True, but one cannot linger all one’s life over the introduction any more than one can linger too much over the art of the past. …  Such nostalgia only conceals a lack of sympathy with, a lack of knowledge of, or worse, panic over the now.  Art must always struggle to build onto the past, to break it down if necessary, to free itself from convention and rule as to create newly, vigorously, venturesomely with imagination and individuality. (Wagstaff 2-3) ~Sam Wagstaff When engaging my teenaged dance students in movement improvisation, I often encourage… read more

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In Support of Dance: looking back at DSN

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On July 12, 2011, I had the honor of engaging in a conversation with two pillars of Hartford’s dance community, Judy Dworin and Kathy Borteck Gersten (Artistic/Executive Director and Associate Artistic Director of the Judy Dworin Performance Project respectively).  On this occasion both women chatted with me about Dance Services Network (DSN), an organization founded in 1980 to support and advocate for dance in Greater Hartford.   As a teenager, I was fortunate to have an incredibly generous high school teacher who brought me to seemingly every dance event in Hartford.  In retrospect, I now know that many of these events were organized by DSN.  It was in this context that I had… read more

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Aren’t we all made for dance?

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I’ve been more than a little overwhelmed lately, and I don’t think I’m alone. There are so many challenging/good/terrific things converging all at once, not to mention the abundance of art in the Greater Hartford area this fall.  So I’m trying to keep up.  In the midst of it all, however, I’ve had a couple of experiences that have reminded me just how powerful this dance thing can be.  In addition to teaching the amazing students who have been entrusted to my care this semester, and the performances I’ve bee involved with lately, I have also been invited to share dance with non-dancers on two occasions in the last three weeks.  Perhaps… read more

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Now and the Future Converges …

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I must’ve decided a long time ago that it would be best if I didn’t set my company’s repertory on students.  I am committed to collaborative process and it always seemed far more beneficial, educationally and artistically, for  me to create new work with and for student artists.  In that context, I could help students embody their own voices and thematic concerns while driving them to push past their perceived boundaries.  I could also play to their strengths, knowledge base and skill sets.  My experience directing Dialogue Cycles, an interdisciplinary student ensemble at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts (GHAA) from 2006-2011, provided an important laboratory… read more

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Invitations, Fresh Starts, and Promises Fulfilled …

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The Invisible City Project is officially underway now that the website is up and running.  The site is intended to be a virtual commons for the dance community, for those who want to access that dance community, and for those who may be surprised to learn there is a community at all.  The information on the site is already plentiful, given its short life thus far, but it is intended to whet our collective appetites so we can refine and expand the site together. For a guided tour of sorts, the following links will take you to two specific pages that: invite you… read more

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why and how? because there’s always a story…

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[…] here at the start, it seems appropriate to offer some context around why this website and project came to be.  Consider this a somewhat condensed chronicle of the past three years, the focus of which is why this website exists and how it came to be.  With that said, the timeline goes as follows… [This page is intended to serve as an archive for The Invisible City Project website. While this information is not up to date, it is my hope that its contents continue to provide a point of entry.] AUGUST 2010 On August 25, 2010, Charter Oak Cultural Center called a meeting to… read more

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Shared Resources: College Dance Programs in Connecticut

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[What follows is] a list of statewide college and university programs [as of 2014] which offer a dance major or concentration to matriculating students in Connecticut.  [This page is intended to serve as an archive for The Invisible City Project website. While this information is not updated, it is my hope that its contents continue to provide a point of entry.] Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) CCSU | Dept. of Physical Education and Human Performance | Dept. of Theatre | 1615 Stanley Street  | New Britain, CT  | 06050 Catherine J. Fellows, Dance Program Director/Adviser The Central Connecticut State University Dance Program offers… read more

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home: a place between

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Tourists seek out new places.  In a new setting they are forced to see and think without the support of a whole world of known sights, sounds and smells—largely unacknowledged—that give weight to being …” ~Ti Fu Tuan, Space and Place During the summers of 2007 and 2008, I spent a total of 3 months on the island of Santiago in the Republic of Cape Verde, an archipelago 350 miles off the west coast of Africa.  I was there initially to collaborate with a team of teaching artists from both the United States and Cape Verde, and charged with the… read more

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place is personal

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The Invisible City Project Curatorial Statement Deborah Goffe, Curator I. Point of Reference All that confidence in continuous traditions and innocent encounters with pristine cultures has been shattered in our post-colonial epoch.  Borders bleed, as much as they contain.  Instead of dividing lines to be patrolled or transgressed, boundaries are now understood as crisscrossing sites inside the post-modern subject.  Difference is resituated within, instead of beyond, the self.  Inside and outside distinctions, like genres, blur and wobble (Conquergood 184). “ If place is home, and home is where the body is, then can we conclude that place is located or… read more

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Shared Resources: Nonprofit Youth and Community Dance Programs

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[What follows is] a list of Greater Hartford area organizations [as of 2014] who provide opportunities for Greater Hartford youth the opportunity to engage deeply in the art of dance as students, performers and/or dance makers.  [This page is intended to serve as an archive of The Invisible City Project website. While this information is not up to date, it is my hope that its contents continue to provide a point of entry.] The Artists Collective Dolly McLean, Founding Executive Director Where the World of Art is Making a Difference for the Children of Greater Hartford …  The Artists Collective… read more