June 22 PASS performance traces family lines in an historic cottage
June 13, 2019, Staten Island, NY— Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden is excited to present an evocative new multimedia dance performance as part of the 2019 PASS (Performing Arts Salon Saturdays) series. s o u n d i n g line will be performed by Brooklyn-based choreographer Adrienne Westwood and her collaborators on Saturday, June 22. The site-specific project was developed during an artist residency at Snug Harbor’s historic grounds in partnership with the CUNY Dance Initiative and the College of Staten Island.
“s o u n d i n g line by Adrienne Westwood is an exciting, unique dance piece being built within one of our historic cottages,” said Melissa West, Vice President of Curation at Snug Harbor. “It is a truly site-specific piece that celebrates the layers of history of the space through movement and live performance. We are thrilled to partner with the CUNY Dance Initiative of this residency and presentation, which connects Adrienne’s work to Snug Harbor and the College of Staten Island.”
s o u n d i n g line, performed and choreographed by Adrienne Westwood
Saturday, June 22 | 6:00 PM reception | 6:30 PM and 7:00 PM performances, followed by a brief Q & A
Cottage B
Admission: $10 | Snug Harbor Member: $8
Buy tickets via snug-harbor.org/pass
Inside Snug Harbor’s historic cottage, four performers create, inhabit, and transform individual and collective pasts to ask what it means to belong as a woman to a family line. Using movement and shadow play, and manipulating simple elements — cloth, rope, paper, and light — Adrienne Westwood’s s o u n d i n g line pulls the imagined histories of female ancestors into the present.
“In developing s o u n d i n g line, my long-term vision for it as a dance to be experienced in the container of a home, and I am thrilled to have found that home in Snug Harbor’s magical historic cottage,” said Westwood. “By inhabiting a space not typically associated with performance, I hope the piece will offer itself to its audience on slightly different terms. We are creating an intimate event that uses performance’s hyper-attentive care to focus a contemplative, embodied, shared experience of private, personal memory. Working in the space for an extended time together with my collaborators is such a privilege, and is allowing us fully investigate and refine the work to achieve this.”
Westwood’s team includes Kathryn Nusa Logan (composter/musician and dancer), Katie Swords Thurman (dancer), Amanda Kmett’Pendry (dancer), Julia Kelly (dancer), and Seth Easter (designer). Learn more about Adrienne Westwood’s work at www.adriennewestwood.com
Adrienne Westwood (choreographer and director) is a Brooklyn-based artist whose multi-layered work incorporates objects into embodied explorations of memory, bringing traces of other times and places into the present moment. Her work has been presented widely in NYC and at Jacob’s Pillow, CCN-Ballet de Lorraine (France), WUK (Vienna), The Firkin Crane (Ireland), Great Friends Dance Festival (RI), McCallum Theater (CA), and The Philly Fringe Festival. A 2018-19 CUNY Dance Initiative Space Grant recipient, past support includes LMCC’s Fund for Creative Communities, Manhattan Community Arts Fund, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the pilot Parent-Artist Space Grant from BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and extensive residencies at One Arm Red.
From 2011-2018, Westwood served on the selection committee for “The Bessie” New York Dance and Performance Awards, co-chairing the “current practices” subcommittee for four years. An experienced educator, she has served on faculty for Florida State University’s FSU in NYC program, at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and SUNY Fredonia; guest artist teaching includes Dickinson College, Chautauqua Institution, CLASSCLASSCLASS, and Performatica (Puebla, Mexico). She received her MFA from Hollins University/ADF under the close mentorship of Donna Faye Burchfield and her BFA from UNCSA.
This PASS performance was developed in part through a residency at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden. PASS is supported in part by public funding through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Adrienne Westwood’s residency and performance at Snug Harbor are held in partnership with the Department of Creative and Performing Arts at the College of Staten Island as part of the CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI), which receives major support from The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the SHS Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and Dance/NYC’s New York City Dance Rehearsal Space Subsidy Program, made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. CDI is spearheaded and administered by The Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College. www.cuny.edu/danceinitiative
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ABOUT SNUG HARBOR CULTURAL CENTER & BOTANICAL GARDEN
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden’s historic 83-acre campus is one of the largest ongoing adaptive reuse projects in America, with 28 structures, 14 unique botanical gardens, 10 acres of wetlands, and a two-acre urban farm. Our mission is to provide a vibrant, regional cultural destination that offers dynamic programming in the arts, education, horticulture, agriculture, and recreation for diverse cultures and all ages while ensuring a well-managed campus for all residents of Staten Island and surrounding communities. Snug Harbor is a proud Smithsonian Affiliate. Learn more about Snug Harbor at snug-harbor.org.
