MFA Student Project Indelible Marks Goes on the Road

Having already made its premiere on campus in February, Indelible Marks, a culmination of the graduate career of MFA candidate in dance Annie Kloppenberg, is set to make its way over spring break to one of the world's leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms: the Movement Research (MR) in New York City. A selection of excerpts of the work will be performed at MR at the historic Judson Church on March 23. The following day, the entire work will be preformed at Green Street Studios (GSS), a center for dance and movement artists in Cambridge, Mass.

This will not be Kloppenberg's first experience with GSS. In 2002, she was among the first group of artists to be selected for the GSS Emerging Artist program. They presented her first full evening concert Caution: Flammable in 2002 and in 2005, she was invited to present a second concert (Between the Lines) with two other artists.

Indelible Marks was inspired by the landscape architectural concept of "desire paths" a term used by landscape architects for paths that people wear away on land. Says Kloppenberg, "Sometimes, instead of pre-determining paths, these worn away paths are later paved and become permanent parts of that landscape. That idea became the springboard for this multi-disciplinary project."

The collaboration features performers Ashley Thorndike (PhD candidate), Laurie Atkins (MFA candidate), Adriana Durant (MFA candidate) and undergraduate dance majors Meredith Hurst, Leigh Lotocki, Alex Vetrano, and Katie Vickers; video by dance graduate student Lily Skove; set by Department of Art graduate student Nicole Gibbs; sound score by Department of Dance Music Director Michael Wall; and lighting design by Professor of Dance David Covey. Anne Warjone-Bridgeland, a graduate student in the landscape architecture program, served as a consultant during early phases of the project.

"These two performances present valuable opportunities for the undergraduate students I have been working with to deepen their work in this piece, to perform alongside dance professionals, for new audiences, and to experience firsthand the kind of dance performing work they might pursue post-graduation. For me, it serves as a bridge between my MFA career and my re-entry into the field" says Kloppenberg.

Kloppenberg received an Alumni Grant for Graduate Research and Scholarship (AGGES) in support of the on-campus version of her thesis project, but additional support for the spring break performances was provided by Dance Department Chair Susan Van Pelt Petry and through the department's Helen Alkire Fund for Special Projects and the Quarterly Funding Initiative.