Scapegoat Garden’s rootedness in collaborative processes most often manifest within a circle of dance/movement artists who co-make performance works over the course of months or years. However, on occasion we are able to engage in extended partnerships with other artists or groups beyond the immediate network of Scapegoat Garden, offering us the opportunity to deepen our work at the intersections of dance with other disciplines …
Reaction Bubble (2017)
The term reaction bubble refers to the ways social and physical distance between people correlate, as outlined by Proxemics (public space, social space, personal space and intimate space). This project unfolded over a 3-year period, and manifested as an interdisciplinary, interactive installation and performance entitled Reaction Bubble at Real Art Ways in March-June 2017. The project was led by the multimedia duo LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus) and involved a collaboration between Hartford-based ceramicist Matt Towers, Scapegoat Garden’s Deborah Goffe, and Tyler Henry who provided technical direction. Movement work was developed first in processes with a group of Hampshire College and Five College Dance Students in 2014. Deborah undertook the final phase of development with dance collaborators, Safi Harriot, Rosanna Karabetsos, Kate Seethaler, and Arien Wilkerson. Reaction Bubble received major support from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Important funders include the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, the J. Walton Bissell Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Reaction Bubble evolved through multiple performances at Real Arts Ways between March and June 2017. This is a full video of a performance from our final June weekend.
The chart above reflects a process devised together with dance collaborators, Deborah Goffe, Safi Harriot, Rosanna Karabetsos, Kate Seethaler, and Arien Wilkerson. Mapping embodied rules of engagement through Edward T. Hall’s theorization of proxemics, we arrived at four modalities through which we could modulate our movement in relation to public space, social space, personal space, and intimate space. How do we move and and relate to bodies differently when in each of these kinds of spaces and contexts?
In the 2014-2015 academic year, Deborah Goffe engaged a group of Hampshire College and Five College Dance students in a choreographic process. Using reaction bubble as a source of inspiration, the repertory project served as an incubator for subsequent phases of the Reaction Bubble process.
Eyes, Stones (2012)
In her award winning debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones, Elana Bell‘s transformative poems invoke characters inexorably linked to the land of Israel and Palestine, and examines the complexity of their relationships to the land—as Biblical homeland, Zionist dream, modern state, and occupied territory. She brings her heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the subsequent multimedia performance of Eyes, Stones, Elana collaborated with Katie Down (live music/sound design), Scapegoat Garden’s Deborah Goffe and Jennifer Cormier (choreography and live dance), Annie Levy, (director) to bring the people, the land, and their histories into conversation with one another.
In times like these, we need art that is willing to hold the complexities and layers of human experience. When violence starts, our hearts tend to harden or close out of fear, but these are precisely the moments when we need to open, to hold our own narrative alongside that of “the other,” to come together knowing that in the wake of this, we are all suffering deeply, and to ask what we can do together to create a new reality. I created this performance piece to bring the poems in Eyes, Stones to life in a visceral and immediate way. As a poet and performer, this is the project I am most proud of. ~Elana Bell
