The Vermont Dance Alliance and Next Stage Arts present The Institute for Folding, a new interdisciplinary dance work by Michael Bodel, on Friday, September 26 at 7:00 pm at Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill, Putney. Tickets are $20 and available at nextstagearts.org. Doors open at 6:15 pm.
The Institute for Folding is a cardboard choreography of human knowledge, neglect, and wonder. Through movement, language, live sound, and 30 sheets of cardboard, the work explores our relationship to knowledge—our drive for scientific understanding, the ebb and flow of our ignorance, and our current disregard for what has been discovered. The piece speaks to this precarious moment when collective trust in knowledge has faltered and our sense of shared wonder has diminished. The performance runs about an hour.
Choreographer Michael Bodel is known for creating interdisciplinary works that integrate objects, place, and sensory experience. His projects have ranged from dances choreographed to oral histories of immigration, to a pageant in an apple orchard, to a movement exploration of Foucault’s Corps Utopique. Before The Institute for Folding, he developed a dance centered on grain—how it is sown, gathered, hoarded, and lost. Bodel is also Director of External Affairs at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts, serves on the advisory board of The Field Center in Rockingham, and lives with his family in Putney.
This performance is part of the Vermont Dance Alliance’s Residency Program, which supports Vermont choreographers with paid creation time, touring support, and ensemble funding. Founded in 2016, the Vermont Dance Alliance uplifts dance as a vital and transformational art form, expanding visibility and access for artists and audiences across the state.
The Vermont Dance Alliance thanks its many partners for making this residency possible, including Vermont Arts Council, the Byrne Foundation, Briggs Opera House, The Dance and Movement Center, First Congregational Church, Junction Arts & Media, Junction Dance Festival, LINES Vermont Dance Studio, Highland Center for the Arts, Middlebury Dance Department, Mascoma Bank, Next Stage Arts, and The Putney School.
