1992

Dune or Moving Earth Dune is created and performed by Maida that takes place with the full body mostly on the floor.  This solo originated out of her experiences as a child in Kanab, Utah, Withers place of birth, where the family visited the Coral Dunes National Park for family entertainment on Sunday. Maida Withers, dancer, and Verbal Call Cliff, filmmaker, create a thirty minute film on the Coral Dunes, Sands Cycles.

Moving Earth / Dune engages the entire body in a poetic sensuality of connection to the moving dunes that in subtlety are changing shape moment by moment.  The Coral Dunes have been taken over by dune buggies that roar through the coral dunes disturbing both the sound and the moving earth. Isabel Luke Rust, Maida’s mother loved the various colors of the earth in southern Utah. The Rust family move from Kanab to Salem, Utah was a very difficult time for the entire family. Kanab was a magical place.  Isabel gathered glass fruit jars and filled them with sands of the varied landscapes in Southern Utah. Today Maida has two jars of the Coral Dunes in her home.

At this time in dance, the relationship of the body to gravity was being explored….first with one body and the floor and then two bodies with each other and the floor.

Many of Withers dances have reference to sensuality of the body.

View DUNE In Winds of Sand:  https://vimeo.com/101621322 : (00:00:00 to 0:05:58)
Also view DUNE in Earth Spirit Rising:  https://vimeo.com/9360613 9  (0:09:13 to 0:16:53)