(1984) May 14  Duet “Outer Space” performance –Mr. and Mrs. Sally Ride.  Maida Withers and Brook Andrews performed the charming Mr. and Mrs. Sally Ride in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum lobby for a large audience of tourists with families under the spaceships in the large building entrance foyer. Music was presented “live” by Teddy Klaus. Brook Andrews and Maida Withers were dressed in plastic suits and performed in a “floating” manner upside down and downside up, bumping with ease and suspended in falling and rolling as if in outer space without earth’s gravity.  It was exciting to perform simulated life outside planet earth under the airplane hanging in the large open space above the audience. Many children on school tours were in the audience. Dance for Children was a passion for Maida who had spent several years introducing dance to children in schools in America as part of the national Artist-in-the-Schools programs in Illinois, Connecticut, Tennessee, others.  Also interest about space and American’s in space was of great interest to school children and adults.

Also, Mr. and Mrs. Sally Ride was part of the Dance Construction Company performance that was presented as part of  Smithsonian Salute To Washington Dance Series by the Smithsonian Resident Association with performances at the Natural History Museum Baird Auditorium. The Dance Construction Company Salute to Washington Dance was an evening-length performance titled, Dances on Men and Women. The event was for the Company’s 10th anniversary celebration with a retrospective featuring  performances including excerpts from Yesterday’s Garlands and Yesterday’s Kisses (1976), Duet on Stools, Woman See (1980), Families Are Forever (1982), and Mr. and Mrs. Sally Ride(1984).

What the press is saying

"The program of well-chosen excerpts chronicled Miss Withers' personal and always fascinating journeys in dance, as well as changing attitudes toward family life and love." "The company serves as a vehicle for Miss Withers' explorations of mixed performance media - modern movement, experimental music, and avant-garde visual effects. Devoid of the multimedia trappings and intense psychological scenarios of the original works, the choreography could be savored as pure dance anchored by the symbolic interaction of men and women in the movement." "This was a rare opportunity to see the evoluton in Miss Withers' work over the years." Julie Van Camp

"Now that the Dance Construction troupe is about to celebrate a 10th birthday, Withers decidd it's time for a retrospective. Thus, excerpting older work for Saturday's program proved timely. It also turned out to have unanticipated benefits. The concentration and concision of the excerpts - in contrast to the more diffuse wholes-worked to their advantage. The program also offered a more compreensive view of Withers' and the company's artistic range. The selection, avoiding the purely formal side of Withers' choreography, were grouped together as "Dances on Men and Women" and explored gender relationships of the past, present and future. The amusing "Duet on Stools" from Yesterday's Garlands and Yesterday's Kisses, had a couple casually disrobing, with constant interruptions by stray thoughts and daydreams. Three numbers from Put on the Music and Let's Dance were whimsically stylized versions of '40s social dances. From the feminist Woman See came two duets - the blithely sensous "Journey of Innocence" and the love-hate vignette "Ties That Bind." Especially powerful was a quartet from "Families Are Forever" that probed generational and genealogical linkages. The new piece, Mr. and Mrs. Sally Ride, a duet for Withers and Brook Andrews, took off on the floating movement quality and the newly defined male-female roles evoked by space travel. The ohter dancers were John Bailey, Frances Stonkey, Dale Crittenberger, Susan Jamieson, and Susan Short. Like Withers and Andrews, they projected a strong sense of personal involvement." Alan M. Kriegsman