Branch Dances at Wave Hill

Merián Soto returns to the Bronx, her artistic home, to develop Branch Dances at Wave Hill, through generated@wavehill a commissioning program that provides artists the opportunity to create temporal work for the grounds. During this year-long residency she will create four outdoor performances, one each season, and will participate in the Winter Workspace Program. The first performance takes place Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 3PM.

This new project borrows from the seasonal structure of Soto’s award-winning, One Year Wissahickon Park Project presented in Wissahickon Valley Park, a wooded section of Philadelphia’s famed Fairmount Park. Soto uses both choreographed and improvised movement to transform everyday life experience, memory and history into innovative works that create a heightened awareness of emotion, expression and consciousness.

Branch Dances at Wave Hill performances are slow and meditative, yet powerfully communicative. Soto works with her team of five dancers―Beau Hancock, Shavon Norris, Jumatatu Poe, Olive Prince and Marion Ramirez―and percussionist Robert (Tigger) Benford, to connect body, mind, place and elements to stillness. For each perforamance Soto selects locations that respond to seasonal aspects of the landscape, taking advantage of Wave Hill’s brilliant foliage, sweeping vistas and sculptural trees. Audiences are invited to slow down and enter a state of heightened receptivity to nature.

http://www.wavehill.org/arts/branch_dances.html