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PAST EVENTS

2024

Shake the Cabin Fever!
February 10 and 11 at the Briggs Opera House

White River Junction VT.

shell

Ellen Smith Ahern is a dance artist and social worker/community organizer living with her family on Abenaki lands in N’Dakinna/New Hampshire. As a Creative Community Fellow with National Art Strategies, her dances explore the intersection of movement, storytelling and nature, creating performance projects that include a wider array of people than might otherwise feel welcomed into traditional dance spaces.

shhh!

Our basic matter forever shall be

Part of the sea, soil, and trees

The stardust within you once danced in the light

Eyes open or closed, the universe burns bright

Created and directed by Elizabeth Kurylo. Poem by Calvin Walker. Choreographed by Elizabeth Kurylo and Calvin Walker. Sounds engineering by Edward Childs. Music excerpt from For All We Have Destroyed by Stacy Fahrion performed by the Bergamot String Quartet. Costume design by Janna Genereaux.

uncertain winds

A new work of movement, sound and grain

This is the shipping news. It’s a forecast of expectations for a certain place at a certain time. Listen across the distance. Gather what we know. Save it, or scatter it.

Created and Directed by Michael Bodel. Sound Design by Finn Campman. Choreography by Michael Bodel, Jessica Trout-Haney and Reina Hitotoki. Performed by Michael Bodel, Jessica Trout-Haney, Finn Campman.

This project is in development.

Artists Bios

Michael Bodel makes interdisciplinary dance works. Some of these projects are place based and many integrate puppetry, object theater or sensorial stuff. His process involves research into disparate areas and play. Past works have included dances choreographed to oral histories of immigration, a pageant set in an apple orchard, and a puppet opera unpeeling Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”. He is currently developing a project about the beginnings and ends of science, constructed from text, movement and twenty sheets of cardboard. As a dance scholar, Michael fancies writing about historical pageantry and embodied cognition. He works at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth and lives with his family in Putney, VT.

Finn Campman is a Putney School alum and studied printmaking, poetry, and literature at Sarah Lawrence College. In 1991 he joined Sandglass Theater, and founded Company of Strangers, whose production Moth and Moon won an UNIMA Citation of Excellence, in 1999. He has toured much of the world performing his theater work, and for four years was an Artist in Residence at The Hall Farm Center for the Arts and Education. Recently, he has been focusing his creative energy on painting and electronic music with his band The Brothers Chorizo. He has taught English and Art at Hilltop Montessori School for 21 years. www.finncampman.com


Jessica Trout-Haney is an aquatic ecologist and a postdoctoral researcher in the Biology Department at Dartmouth. She has always loved merging science with the arts. She received her BS and BA at the University of New Hampshire, majoring in Zoology and German with minors in Dance and Music. Jessica received her MS Villanova University and her PhD in Biology at Dartmouth, while studying Arctic lakes in Greenland. As a dance artist, Jessica has focuses on tap, contemporary and aerial dance forms. She has been a member of the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble since 2016 and teaches dance at The Dance Collective in West Lebanon, New Hampshire.


Ellen Smith Ahern is a dance artist and social worker/community organizer living with her family on Abenaki lands in N’Dakinna/New Hampshire. Ellen has performed and taught throughout Mexico, Cuba, Qatar, Europe and the US, collaborating with many artists, including Jane Comfort & Company, Lida Winfield, Kate Elias, Rebecca Pappas, Hannah Dennison, Pauline Jennings, Polly Motley, El Circo Contemporaneo, Amy Chavasse, David Appel and Tiffany Rhynard’s Big APE. With generous support from many institutions and community members, she shares her work through film, installation and live performance in a diverse array of venues, including the National Gallery of Art, Dance on Camera Festival/Film at Lincoln Center, Middlefield Community Center, Bates Dance Festival, AVA Gallery, Dixon Place, Artistree Community Arts Center, Flynn Theater, Ionion Center of Kefalonia and Rococo Theatre in Prague. As a Creative Community Fellow with National Art Strategies, Ellen creates performance projects that include a wider array of people than might otherwise feel welcomed into traditional dance spaces. https://ellensmithahern.com

Elizabeth Kurylo choreographies encompass elements of physical theatre as well as stylistic dance. She develops choreographic themes in close collaboration with her performers, respecting their unique dance framework. She is especially fascinated by ethnic and street dance. She produced and directed two short films with grant support from the Vermont Arts Council. She is the founder of The Junction Dance Festival. The organization sponsors a seed program, called ChoreoLab, encouraging dance artists to create and develop their own choreographic projects in her dance studio in Corinth, VT. https://babettekurylo.com

Calvin Walker is a writer and dance performer. He began dancing in his early teens under the guidance of Cheri Skurdall and the NCUHS dance program. Writer by day, break-dancer by night, he continues to train and compete in a balanced capacity with his crew/band of brothers, the Rhythm Riderz. In the past, he has performed with Bryce Dance Company and as a variety act with Green Mountain Cabaret. He recently danced with Paula Higa Dance for the production of The Migrant Body. He has taught at studios all across Vermont and has a passion for all forms of movement

2023

Tell Me How You Breathe

Produced by The Junction dance festival and funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.