The Garden Center for Contemporary Dance
garden: a place where humans define, initiate and interact with form to create a specialized environment.
Since March 2011, The Garden Center for Contemporary Dance has served as Scapegoat Garden's home and laboratory for creative process, performance and community engagement. In addition to its function as the company's rehearsal and office space, this beautiful, light-filled room is also an ideal space to create and display Scapegoat Garden's rich visual landscape.
Our process is rooted in collaboration, our mission grows out our desire to create meaningful art, and our vision blossoms as people are brought into relationship with each other and the place they call home. To this end, The Garden Center is quickly emerging as an inviting space for social gatherings, discussions about arts and culture, works-in-progress showings, and intimate performances. As our programming for the space continues to evolve, we are eager to further explore the company's hospitality aesthetic, discovering the place where artistic expression and old fashioned hospitality meet. We also look forward to sharing the space and providing members of the community with opportunities to give voice to their own meaningful expression.
For more information on events at The Garden Center, or to inquire about hosting your own event in the space, contact gardencenter@scapegoatgarden.org.
Ongoing Events at The Garden Center
Talking Dance Forum
Monday, April 23 from 6:30-8pm
We invite you to join us monthy for Talking Dance, a forum facilitated by Leslie Frye Maietta. Building on her current graduate study, Leslie offers this forum as a way to nourish the dance community with discussions inspired by dance history, theory, and other topics relevant to the art form. Talking Dance are open to local dance artists, educators and enthusiasts as a way to connect, mobilize and enliven conversation surrounding dance. How can we move beyond complacency in our teaching? How can we examine race, gender and class in relation to our dance community? Where and how can we push the boundaries of knowledge and art making and what impact does that have on the people around us? How will others resist or push back in the challenging of their ideas and beliefs?
Readings have included: The Black Dancing Body, by Brenda Dixon Gottschild; Metaphysics in Motion, by Sondra Fraleigh; Critical Moves, by Randy Martin; Cruising Utopia, by Jose Esteban Munoz. Articles and readings for upcoming talks can be be emailed in advance of each session. This, however, if not a class. All are welcome, to join the discussion even if you haven't had the chance to read all the materials.
To confirm your participation and to receive supplemental reading materials, email leslie@scapegoatgarden.org.
Works in Progress Showings
Friday, April 27 from 6-8pm
Monthly Works in Progress Showings provide an opportunity for area dance makers to share works in progress, engage in meaningful discussion and receive constructive feedback in a safe and supportive environment. Interested participants are invited to share a complete work (no longer than 15 minutes), a movement phrase, or musings about a newly conceived idea. Each work in progress will be followed by facilitated non-directorial feedback from those in attendance. In addition to artists, the evening is also open to those who are simply interested in nurturing the creative work being incubated in our city.
If you are interested in sharing work in this month, please register in advance via deborah@scapegoatgarden.org
(re)Birth Salon
Thursday, May 10 at 7:30pm
Salon: a lively coming together of people from varied segments of the community, gathered under one roof by an inspired host, to share art, ideas, and conversation.
Scapegoat Garden cordially invites special guests to an evening of champagne, hors d'oveuvres, conversation and a salon performance of (re)Birth. After a year in development as part of the Artist-in-Residence program at Billings Forge, (re)Birth premiered at Charter Oak in May 2011. Now employing the intimacy and interactivity of the salon environment, we offer members of our community the opportunity to explore our collective capacity for creativity and regeneration through (re)Birth. Here, dynamic movement, eclectic music, and projected images intersect; universal rituals find expression through the modern day baby shower; and the notion of giving birth represents all we hope to bring into being.
Seating in limited, so RSVPs are required. To learn more about the salons, receive an official invitation, and to be added to this or future salon guest lists, please contact deborah@scapegoatgarden.org.
Contact Improvisation Jam
Sunday, May 27 from 5-7:30pm
$10 per session
Facilitated by lifelong improvisor, Bonita Weisman, this is an opportunity for like-minded movers to come together to explore Contact and ensemble improvisation in a fun, supportive, sometimes instructive, disorienting and listening environment. Relationship in Contact can mirror relationship in life: build trust, take risks and push your own edges. The body demands honesty in this form. We usually begin with a facilitated warm-up and then follow the path of least resistance. Taking place on the last Sunday of each month, the Jam is open to seasoned Contact dancers, improvisational movers and those interested in being open and curious.
Open Class Series and Workshops
A wide range of classes and workshops are offered periodically throughout the year. These events are facilitated/instructed by Scapegoat Garden collaborators, members of the community, and guests from near and far.
The Garden Center
for Contemporary Dance
56 Arbor Street, Suite 411
Hartford, CT 06106
(Parking is available behind and to the south side of Real Arts Ways. You MUST, however,
access the elevator in the main lobby on the street side of the building, or take the stairs.)
experience: n. 1. An encounter; ordeal; event 2. Knowledge or skill gained from doing a particular thing 3. Amount of knowledge gained from practice 4. The sum total of the events of one’s life 5. Knowledge gained from personal observation.
mailing address: 810 Tower Ave Hartford, CT 06112 860.881.9943
deborah@scapegoatgarden.org
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