Dance Nation by Clare Barron
 
Directed by April Sweeney
Scenic and Lighting Design by Miranda Hardy
Costume design by Glenna Ryer
Sound Design by Micheal Weiss 
Choreography by Tariro Chinyanganya
with additional choreography by Rachel Marotto & Marie Pugliese

Colgate University, Hamilton, NY
November 6-10, 2019

This memory play, written to be performed by actors between the ages of 18-70. Staging it with a group of college students does not change Barron’s world so much as highlight differing tensions: this allows the agency of the material to be discovered precisely when it may be needed most.

 

In this world, heavy objects fall from the sky, thigh bones break, pre-pubescent girls grow fangs, the earth shakes, a Goddess may appear and a ritual of adolescents comes into focus. Negotiating their present and future selves, dreams, failures and relationships this dance group, this collective, this little army of fierceness surges against their time.

 

They shine a light that they don’t understand yet and compel us to ask ourselves what would it have been like at 13 to have had that “voice”? Quite deftly Ashlee’s 13-year-old self asks us from across time “What will I do with all this power?”  And of course, Ashlee answers for us: “well I hope I don’t pussy out.”