Carole Drake and Michael Kasper
1973- Passage Nine; Choreography: Withers with 9 GW Master of Arts and BA dancers doing 9 phrases to music for nine horns by Riegger and Davies; Premiere: Lisner Auditorium, Washington, DC (Brook Andrews; John Bailey; Carole Drake; Michael Kasper; Liz Lerman; Quincy Northrup; Lynda Spikell; Betty Tittsworth; Emily Waddams; ; Bill Hollingsworth; Music: Davies / Riegger ; Premiere, Lisner Auditorium. (Notes for the choreography are in MWDCCo files.)
Betty Tittsworth and Brook Andrews, foreward; John Bailey and JoAnn Sellars?, background
Michael Kasper and Carole Drake
Carole Drake and JoAnn Sellars
Archives
Dance Construction Company 1974 – 2006
Dance Construction Company: 1974-2006 (31:23)
“This video is part of the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) Catalyst anniversary exhibition that highlights 35 years of WPA’s history. The WPA retrospective curated by J.W Mahoney demonstrates the continuing uniqueness, resilience, and catalytic power of WPA, one of the nation’s first alternative arts organization.”
This video is located currently on the opening online page of http://maidadance.com MWDCCo: 1974-2006.
See “Maida Withers: A Choreographer’s Life (Exhibition in Dimock Gallery, Washington, DC, 1974)
Collision Course a.k.a. Pillow Talk (Brazil Street Festival)
Visões Urbanas (2013)
During a dance notation conference in Mexico (I remember it as Rio de Janeiro, but that is under discussion) after Maida performed a solo, she watched from the wings as a mature female, a stranger named Mirtes Calheiros, performed an amaziing, unusual hypnotic dance. Maida waited to meet this mature and intelligent dancer…..and the friendship continues. Maida and others from Dance Construction Company have participated in four or more Visões Urbanas street festivals in São Paulo, Brazil. Mirtes and her husband/dancer/manager/yoga specialist, Ederson Lopez, produces amazing theatre works for stage and other locations through Cia Arte Saos Do Corpo, Art Brazil. Members of the Company have a maturity that is lacking in many dance companies today. Each individual in the Brazil group contributes materials as a mature and informed performer. They perform on stages, in the street, at monuments, on film, and tour internationally.
Anthony Gongora, Maida Withers, and the audience perform in Collision Course a.k.a. Pillow Talk, not the Pillow Talk stage work, but a script for performance and audience involvement in Visoes Urbanas, 2013, street festival.
Visoes Urbanas 2012 – example of annual festival.
Maida is not on this video. Trying to arrange for videos for the purpose of the archive.
Hello Maida
I hope you do a great trip to Africa.
We have had the honor of presenting our performance after your marvelous presentation. I know the impression it caused on us will last for a long time and because of it I want to thank the opportunity of meeting you. It renewed our morale in order to keep on our way, once it gives us the chance of meeting people like you. We have visited your web site and I could understand a little more about your research.
I’d like to get your home address so we could send you some videos of our company and so keep this friendship.
Best wishes
Looking forward to seeing again
Company performed after me in Mexico.
Mirtes Calheiros
MIRTES – artesãos do corpo [mailto:mirtes@ciaartesaosdocorpo.art.br]
www.ciaartesaosdocorpo.art.br
Maida and DCCo have participated 5 times, I believe, in Brazil. Mirtes came to GWU to create a work on students, but becaue of COVID, GWU classes were not on campus for public events such as a live performance.
Dance of the Auroras – Fire in the Sky: Science and Art
(2001)
Public presentation of aspects of Dance of the Auroras – Fire in the Sky was sponsored by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in the large domed Albert Einstein Planetarium, Washington, DC the week prior to the premiere of the stage work in Lisner Auditorium.
The evening featured scientist presentations from NASA and other space agencies in Colorado and a performance by dancers with live interactive virtual worlds projected on Planetarium walls, images related to earth’s auroras and visual data from NASA – visual projections managed by Tania Fraga, Sao Paulo, Brazil. The event was sold out. It was a powerful moment for both the audience and the Dance Construction Company.
During the four years that Dance of the Auroras was being researched, Maida travelled and met with Auroral Scientists in Russia (All Sky Camera creators – the first), Norway, Sweden, Alaska, and, of course, at the NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.
Remember, at that time NASA was not, yet, displaying daily activity of the Sun online. NASA connected Maida to scientists and photographers from around the globe. She spent two weeks in Fairbanks Alaska collaborating with NASA scientists and faculty from the University. Each night she travelled to the observation station in the hopes the Aurora would be visible.