LEDGE – Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, November 12 & 13, 1988
Video produced by Linda Lewett at Fairfax TV (FCAC), Fairfax, Virginia
Photo:  DUNE,  Maida Withers
A mythical journey performed by Maida Withers and John Lancaster to an original new music score by composer Michael Willis in a sparse stage set of hanging ropes. This is a full evening duet in seven segments: “Moving Earth/Dunes”, “Mountain Birthing”, “Man Birthing”,  “Earthworks”, “Crossings”, “Earth Spirit Rising” “Soaring.”

The video shown above was created for Fairfax Cable Access Corporation and shown on Channel 10, Fairfax, Virginia, 1989.

The world premiere stage performance was presented in the First International Festival of Dance, Mexico City, Mexico,  August 25 to September 04, 1988.  MWDCCo performed Ledge on August 30/31, 1988.   The invitation to the Festival came through Ignacio Duran Loera, Minister of Cultural Affairs at the Embassy in Washington, DC.  Maida Withers and John Lancaster spent two weeks in Mexico City at the Autonomous University for the Festival, sharing ideas and dances with companies from Italy, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, and the USA.

USA performance took place at Dance Place June  4, 1988 (work-in-progress) and was subsequently performed as a completed work in Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, November 12-13, 1988.

Flyer Information: Ledge: Rope, Sand, Weed, Haunting Chants, Suspended Spinning, A Mythic Journey in Seven Sections.

Produced as a dance video for Metro-Arts Program, Cable TV, Fairfax, Virginia:
Dune (0:00:42 to 0:08:28)
Mountain Birthing  (0:08:33 to 0:21:32)
Man Birthing (0:21:36 to 0:24:18)
Earthworks (0:24:20 to  0:27:00)
Crossings  (0:27:02 to 35:49)
Earth Spirit Rising  (0:35:53  to: 0:38:54
Soaring  (0:39:03 to 0:42:22)

View DUNE also included on In Winds of Sand:  https://vimeo.com/101621322;
Moving Earth /  Dune Solo: https://00:00:00 to 0:05:58

View DUNE also on Earth Spirit Rising:  https://vimeo.com/93606130
Moving Earth / DUNE Solo: 0:09:13 to 0: to 0:16:53

What the press is saying

"... virtuostic... captivating imagery..."

"Creating a dance for herself proved to be a new experience for Withers. "When you are the performer you don't have to deal with another personality or style. It allows me a more forward approach not to have to transfer my ideas to someone else's body. My being the performer removes me from the analytical and intellectual role into the intuitive. I don't has to break things down in a detailed way. It does have one disadvantage, you can never look at what you are doing." Withers prefers full-length dances, which usually take her a year of conceptualization, research and experimen tation. "This piece is very ancient, primative, but simple," says Withers. This summer she will return to southern Utah with her company and film crews to construct the full work on sites in the canyons and deserts. "Ledges" at 8:30 pm June 4 and 5 1986 at Dance Place. Linda Dinsmore

"Strong in images and fertile in meanings, the work is pedestrian in its dance movement and one suspects there will be further changes. The first image has John Lancaster hanging upside down on a rope. Withers turns him as she stalks around his suspended form. These two could be gymnasts. The second hanging, despite the athletic equipment suggests a crucifixion - Lancaster writhes slowly painfully, while dangling upside down from a trapeze. Withers stands poised in back with pulley handles. For the third hanging, he kneels and Withers places his head in a noose. She tightens it and his body gives a final twitch. When the two dance together it is the arrested motion that dominates. They lean toward each other like wrestlers, pushing, at loggerheads. At other times, they lean on each other for support. Even in a passage of lifts, Withers is snared by Lancaster rather than sustained in flight. Apart, too, it is inhibited movement that becomes the visual focus - Withers' arms immobile, stretched b a stiff rod across her back and Lancaster poised warily on a pedestal. Or Withers squats with her arms propped on her legs. George Jackson

Withers Out on a Ledge! … "The dance is deliberately haphazard, as though Withers were showing us individual pages of her notebook rather than a finished lab report… and the choreography - acrobatic and aggressive, with its big, plain movements danced on a mammoth scale - caught the awesome power of its subject in a way that nature dances seldom do." Alexandra Tomalonis