In 2018 Dancers’ Workshop (DW) envisioned two large warehouse spaces south of Jackson and knighted them Tickling the Beast, the beast of creativity. This is a space DW created to provide affordable studio space for visual artists and to offer multidisciplinary art classes. Why? Because sometimes dance alone is not enough and by laying other art forms we can explore our ideas more deeply. We currently have wood and metal working studios and a large classroom space for multidisciplinary offerings. It is also a space we use to build sets, scenery and costumes for our own productions.

For years, I have dreamt of commissioning visual artists and gathering community members to create stories, build large scale pole puppets and perform in an outdoor setting starting with a parade. In the summer of 2008 I taught movement at Marlboro College in a residency with Sandglass Theatre. This is when I became inspired by the art of Ensemble Puppetry (multiple guides working with one large puppet).

What is a puppet? Is a puppet a doll, figurine or object that, through skillful performance strategies, is made to seem alive? Or is the puppet a place where the audience and puppeteer meet in the world of illusion? For me, the puppet is this meeting place of audience and puppeteer, a place of metaphor and ideas.

The final inspirations for the pole puppet project were South African based Handspring Puppet Company and London-based company Artichoke, both of whom create extraordinary work.

[ FEEL ]

Handspring Puppet Company

War Horse, commissioned by The National Theatre In London in 2006 explores the interspecies communication between soldiers and their horses during World War I.

The subject matter of the play, which I saw at Lincoln Center in 2011, was shocking to contemporary audiences, many unaware that horses were deployed on the front of the war and were either massacred by the newly invented armored tank or starved to death on the battle field. At some level this battle was a metaphoric emblem of the death of a simpler way of life. The relationships between the soldiers (played by actors) and their horses (puppets) or the experience of a family whose beloved horse was “drafted” and forced to go to war is at the core of this much larger historical story.

Every moment, I felt the life and struggle of the horses and actors. Their very souls, animate and inanimate were present. War Horse was then made into a film  (without the puppets) which did not begin to have the emotional impact which for me exhibits the power of the imagination.

[ SEE ]

Artichoke

Artichoke, founded in 2005 by Helen Marriage and Nicky Webb, the company’s aim is to work with artists to create unique, large-scale experiences. Artichoke believes the arts should not take place only in theatres, concert halls or galleries. Instead, you will find them working in the streets, parks and public squares throughout the UK.

In 2006,The Sultan's Elephant show was performed in the streets of London over the course of four days and seen by an audience of over a million. The show started with a rocket "crashing", tearing up the tarmac, with smoke coming out from the bottom. The next day,  the elephant arrived, along with the Sultan. An oversized marionette emerged from the rocket,  the girl from the Sultan's dreams. The girl met up with the elephant. On the third day, the girl marionette was lifted by a crane onto the elephant's trunk, and was carried on 'Grand Parade' back to a resting place, with the 'sultan' sightseeing with a troop of dancers on top of the elephant. The girl has a needle and thread, and likes to sew things, including a series of cars that were 'sewn' to the tarmac.

The show finished with a Grand Finale, in which the girl climbed into the rocket, which then 'took off'. This involved the rocket firing, with smoke and flames coming out of the bottom. The rocket didn't go anywhere, but when the top was removed from the rocket, by a crane, the girl had disappeared. She had travelled in time...something I aspire to these days!

[ HEAR ]

Sandglass Theatre

In 2012,  I presented Sandglass Theatre’s poignant production D-Generation at the Center Theatre. The week-long residency was a collaboration with Dancers’ Workshop,  St. John’s Cognitive Center and The Center for the Arts. We also held two community workshops on TimeSlips, an innovative approach to bringing joy and creativity to elders and their caregivers. 

This piece explores the rich creative potential and ability to communicate that exists even in people with late-stage dementia. Their words and images, their creative imaginations, yield work that is poetic, humorous, and quite mysterious.

We now have several individuals certified in TimeSlips working within our community.

[ THINK ]

Tickling the Beast

Last summer Dancers’ Workshop invited David Dorfman Company to collaborate on an outdoor performance piece with Contemporary Dance Wyoming, our resident professional dance company - Francesca Romo, Kate Kosharek, Megan Stewart, Michaela Ellingson, Sarah Konrad - and were joined by community members: Ali Price and Ruby Jones. We also invited and commissioned ten visual artists to participate in a week-long workshop with Sandglass Theatre Founders, Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass. Guided by Eric and Ines, they created a story and designed and built five large pole puppets.

The culmination, last Friday one year ago, was a spectacular performance and celebration outside the DW studios in the green space at the Center for the Arts.  The story and pole puppets were based on the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine. The five elements theory outlines the relationship between the different elements in nature and the life force, or "qi," that flows through them. The basic elements are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Each human is a blend of these elements, and in order to be truly healthy, they need to be balanced. Each pole puppet represented an element: 

Wood/Ms Wood/Artist: Evie Lewis; Fire/Love Beast/Artists: Babs Case, Beverly Shore, Molly Silberberg, Meleta Buckstaff; Earth/The Slimy Snail/Artists: Anne Austin & Beverly Shore; Metal/Armadillo/Artists: Jenny & Sam Dowd; Water/Puffer-puss/Artists: Greta Gretzinger & Jennifer Slovitt de Striegel.

My hope was that this event would become an annual tradition of engaging our community and artists in the celebration of creativity. Look forward to next year.