500-Mile Dance Exchange Journey

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Travel Feature

Published on Monday, 09 April 2012 23:56

Written by Joanne Choi

Starting April 10th 2012, Dance Exchange Artistic Director Cassie Meador will embark on a 500-mile walk, launching a new initiative in art and environmentalism. This particular quest will allow Meador to explore various energy sources channeling through her home in Takoma neighborhood of Washington, DC to the east coast of West Virginia and Maryland.

With the help of the creative team in Dance Exchange, it will take approximately two months to finish the journey; it will not only be ecology-based but a physically monitored trip. Joining Meador will be Matt Mahaney, a long-distance hiker, videographer and adjunct artist of the Dance Exchange.

Together, along with the crew, various artists, naturalists, environmentalists, documentarians and partners, will delve into the true assets of the environment such as energy plants, including wind, coal, and waste resource recovery facilities.

The purpose of this project is to promote a community engagement tour in unison with the development of a dance production, How To Lose A Mountain premiering in Spring 2013. It will illustrate how one can unite with nature and save the earth by coming to understand the very essence of such natural resources that one uses and possibly take granted for in his/her daily life. This voyage, being a physical one, may help one comprehend the necessary means of fusing art and science creating a whole, new different approach to the world, humanity and to one’s everyday surroundings.

The 500-mile walk will be carefully documented on the website: http://www.500miles500stories.com/ allowing viewers to experience for themselves and share with others about their travel stories.

On April 10, the day the walk begins, Dance Exchange will perform and host an interactive story collection workshop at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Dance Exchange-led programming will occur at additional university campuses and community centers along the walk route.

This programming includes: a story collection workshop, called 500 Miles/500 Stories, that will encourage participants to reflect on the distances in their lives; and a series of Moving Field Guides, outdoor movement workshops where participants will learn the value of their local ecosystems through walking and dance.

Major support for the Moving Field Guides comes from the U.S. Forest Service. Additional support and partnerships for the walk include the National Endowment for the Arts, the MetLife Foundation, Maryland State Arts Council, and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Girl Scouts of America, Glen Echo Park, the McGuffey Arts Center, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, Workspace for Choreographers, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, the FLOC Outdoors Education Center and the Claytor Nature Study Center.

The stage work, How To Lose a Mountain is a National Performance Network Creation Fund grantee and a co-commission of Dance Place in DC and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan Wisconsin. In partnership with USA Projects, Dance Exchange has launched a fundraising campaign to reach $10,000 by June 22.

For more on this campaign, visit http://www.usaprojects.org/project/500_miles_500_stories.

About Cassie Meador

Cassie Meador is a choreographer, performer, educator and Artistic Director of the Dance Exchange. In recent years, Cassie’s choreographic investigations have tackled numerous social and environmentalissues through the synthesis of movement, sound, and striking visual images. Drift, her 2008 work commissioned by the Kennedy Center and recognized with a Metro DC Dance Award, explores the human relationship to land over time. Her current choreographic project, How To Lose a Mountain, will incorporate a 500-mile walk from Washington, D.C. to West Virginia to trace the sources of the energy that fuel her home.

Her Moving Field Guides, an interactive experience led by artists, naturalists and regional experts in ecology, is being implemented in partnership with the USDA Forest Service. Born in Charleston, SC, and raised in Augusta, GA, Cassie received her B.F.A. indance from The Ohio State University. She joined Dance Exchange in 2002 andassumed the role of Artistic Director in 2011.

About Dance Exchange

Dance Exchange breaks boundaries between stage and audience, theater and community, movement and language, tradition and the unexplored. Founded in 1976 by Liz Lerman and now under the artistic direction of Cassie Meador, Dance Exchange stretches the expressive range of contemporary dance through explosive dancing, personal stories, humor, and a company of performers whose ages span six decades. The work consists of formal concerts, interactive performances, specialized community residencies, and professional training in the art of community-based dance.

An artist-driven organization, Dance Exchange employs a collaborative approach to dance making, administration, and implementation. Representing the multiple artistic voices of Dance Exchange, recent and current choreographic projects include explorations of coal mining, genetic research, radical prayer, human rights, particle physics, geology, and rest in a hyper-driven society.

For more information please visit: http://www.danceexchange.org/ or http://www.500miles500stories.com/

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