(1989) – Maida Withers and the Dance Construction Company were selected for a two-week creative residency, May 9 to 21,1989, at the prestigious Yellow Springs Institute located outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – an international center for art and ideas.  Other artist were in residence as well.

The Institute supported the Company with living quarters, technical facilities, and space to begin to create a new work. During the 2-week resident Withers created Path with dancer James Murphey, John Lancaster, Cristy Lamb, Anne McDonald, and Maida Withers; live music by William Eaton, composer/musician, Arizona.  Visual projection included Utah earth video shot by James Byrne, NYC, during the first company summer residency in Utah.  The installation also included photos of earth photographer, Bruce Hucko, Moab, Utah.

Six years of Utah research residencies and Path set a pattern, style, for many earth works to come including the Shaman solos by Maida Withers.  Maida’s Earth Works,  in a curious way, was/is also related to Maida’s activism in feminism.

The residency occurred one year after Maida began her 7-year odyssey of visits to Utah and the Four Corner’s area with filmmaker, Verabel Cluff, to reconnect to the place of her birth and her family’s roots and the ultimate relationship of humans to planet earth – a deep philosophy of values / origin / and, yes, survival of the human race as we know it!

Path, a multifaceted work created at Yellow Springs was the inspiration for choreography: Spirit Path / Migration,  Earth Spirit Rising,  Dunes, and other earth works created from 1989 through the premiere of Utah * Spirit Place * Spirit Planet * Tukuhnikivatz at Lincoln Center, 1996.

For further development of concept and choreography, view:
Spirit Path / Migration; Ancient Lands, Ancient Peoples;  Utah: Spirit Place –
Spirit Planet – Tukuhnikivatz, others.