the pondering pomegranate: i heart modern dance

part 1 ~ Bog Garden

the Bog Garden is my favorite park in town, and (bonus!) it is within walking distance of our house. i love it - winter, spring, summer, and fall; we've strolled its boardwalks for twenty years.

Bog Garden Barred Owl

i've never seen one this close up - what a magnificent bird! & it had a great view of the dance installation we humans had come to watch, Textures of There by Caroline Althof (for her UNCG MFA thesis). these Soundscape Installations were Part One of her 'site-specific movement experiences.'

i, actually, took a modern dance class at Carolina when i was an undergraduate. (can anyone say Pilobolus?) i enjoyed dancing but found it quite challenging to choreograph, which we had to do for our final exam. how to convey music through movement? so, power to these dancers! (there were "sound stations," which had three different music tracks you could listen to through headphones to see if they changed how you interpreted the dance.)

i like to call this one

he who fell down the mountain

slowly

she who is a tree

or a vine

or just upside-down

woman who unhappily worships water

she who whirls

and twirls

even her hair

warrior woman with red braid

arabesque in converse all-stars

olive flamingo

man who falls slowly

tangles
with upside-down woman

moment in I Think I'll Do Nothing But Listen Now

note fiddler in background - from The Zinc Kings (local)

i jest, but it really was a creative, beautiful, thoughtful performance. i appreciated how carefully they had chosen their clothing (and the color of their clothing - although, water woman's bright white top did not work for me), their shoes, their hairstyles. how they used the environment around them - natural and made - to progress the dance. it was a gracefully choreographed & executed work of art.