Ann Carlson is in a three-week residency/seminar for Doggie Hamlet (MAP 2014) at Alfred University. This collaborative residency with AU students, scholars, and faculty will culminate in two September work-in-progress showings.
Doggie Hamlet is a full-length outdoor performance spectacle that weaves dance, music, visual and theatrical elements with aspects from competitive sheep herding trials. The work is performed by four dancers, one boy, one American Sign Language interpreter, two herding dogs and a flock of sheep in a 30 x 50 foot fenced field. Doggie Hamlet recalls the bucolic impression of a landscape painting or a 3D pastoral poem. The sheep, the dogs, the human performers, and the earth’s surface are at once performing as themselves and as living symbols in this work. Through story, motion, site and stillness Doggie Hamlet explores instinct, sentience, attachment, and loss, and is a beautiful and dreamlike spectacle weaving instinct, mystery, and movement into an unusual performance event.
Doggie Hamlet will be a portal for student engagement with contemporary dialogues on the following disciplines: choreography, performance, sculpture, animal/ environmental studies, design, and social practice. In addition, there will be weekly workshops open to the public in the Miller Performing Arts Center. For more information please contact performs@alfred.edu; read the press release here.
Showings at nevermoor farm (admission is free). More information available here.
Thursday, Sept. 3 at 9 a.m.
Friday, Sept. 4 at 6:30 p.m
