Choreographer Deborah Hay is calling a halt to one of her signature
contributions to Austin cultural life and to dance in general. She is ending
the Playing Awake large group workshops which she has conducted every spring
for the past 15 years. In the Playing Awake format, Hay worked with trained and
untrained dancers for four consecutive months, during which time they would
create a new movement piece. She documented the process in her book Lamb at the
Altar: The Story of a Dance, which covers Playing Awake 1991. The workshops
have served their purpose as a form for her artistic growth, Hay says in the
most recent Deborah Hay Dance Company newsletter. Now, she writes, “I want to
scrutinize choreography. I want more time alone in a studio and/or a more
sophisticated group of students and peers. In what ways this group may be more
sophisticated is something I hope to learn over the next year.” Hay will spend
a significant amount of that time abroad. Beginning August 28, she will spend
four-and-a-half weeks performing and conducting workshops in New Zealand and
Australia. Then, for the month of October, she and Austin artist Tr�
Arenz will be artists-in-residence at the prestigious Bellagio Study and
Conference Center on Lake Como in Italy. Finally, from November 24 through
Decem-ber 20, Hay will be in residency at the School for New Dance Development
in Amsterdam.

Aloha, Johnson/Long

Hay isn’t the only local dancer to be doing some serious traveling this
summer. Darla Johnson, Andrew Long, and members of their company (in this case,
dancers Kate Warren, Heather Sultz, and Lilla Geisler, actor Tim Mateer, and
Technical Director Laura Sandberg) have just returned from a week-long
residency at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. While there, the Austin artists
conducted master classes and workshops, and performed Walking on Water, the
concluding chapter in their recent trilogy of full-length works. Call 467-0704
for info.

A Grant for Grenon

Austin photographer Martha Grenon has been awarded a grant from ArtsLink to
develop a cross-disciplinary project with Albanian writer Robert Martikos. The
collaboration will be a photo-documentary essay on the life of a family during
and after the Hoxha regime, the most severe of the Eastern European communist
dictatorships. Grenon’s images will be matched to writings that Martikos has
been compiling mostly in secret over the past 15 years. The project will result
in an exhibition to be shown in both the United States and Albania and will see
print as a handmade, limited-edition book. ArtsLink enables artists and arts
organizations in the U.S. to develop projects with their counterparts in
Central and Eastern Europe on projects which may benefit both countries. Call
474-9047 or 442-9709 for info.

Send literary, performing, and visual arts news to: “Articulations,” PO Box
49066, Austin, TX 78765 or onstage@auschron.com

This article appears in August 9 • 1996 and August 9 • 1996 (Cover).

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US