Title: Initially titled Trail, then retitled Shard, and subsequently retitled Enfield in Winter

Premiere: The Riverside Dance Festival, January 1981. Numerous subsequent performances, including at Hartwell Theater, SUNY Brockport in 1984, retitled as Enfield in Winter; at the University of Rochester, Todd Theater, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 1984; at University of Michigan Power Center in winter 1985; on several Ann Arbor Dance Works concerts 1985-1989, including performances in NYC at the Cunningham Studio in 1987 and an 11-city tour of Mexico in 1988.

Performers at premiere: Connie Chin, Catlin Cobb, Jessica Fogel, Mickey McLaughlin

Duration: 13 minutes

Music:  Enfield in Winter, by David Borden

Costumes: Jessica Fogel

Description: 

This is one of my favorite works.

This work was originally called Trail while I was choreographing it, then entitled  Shard at its premiere and in early performances of it;  and then in revised versions, was retitled Enfield in Winter, the same title as the music.  It took off from where Beast left off.  It was about reconstructing one’s image after a loss.  It utilized four slide projectors set along the downstage edge of the stage to create four rectangular screens of light on the back cyclorama that captured our shadows as we danced. The four boxes of light, filled with the shadows of the dancers’ abstract gestures, perhaps showed the influence of sculptor Louise Nevelson, who was a mentor to me in the 1970s and 80s. Her walls of wooden sculptures, filled with wooden objects within, were certainly in my image bank.

Like Beast, the dance played with shifting size scales, as the shadows or images went from small to large to small, conveying a fluctuating sense of  power. At one point in the dance, we built a new face. With full bodied gestures, each dancer moved center stage and inscribed an abstraction of a facial feature: a nose, two eyes, a mouth. Then the dancers spread out across the upstage, each occupying a screen, and performed a cannon of those gestures.

I had nearly completed the dance in rehearsals in winter 1980, and was musing on the work while taking a bath in my tub-in-kitchen 6th  floor walkup apartment on E. 77th St in NY, trying to figure out what the dance needed. The apartment was very still and quiet.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a plate on a shelf in the kitchen fell to the ground and smashed into pieces.  It was like a gift or an omen. And I said, “That’s it!”  At the next rehearsal, I told the dancers we were going to break plates within the dance. It seemed the perfect metaphor for breaking a mold, which was the main thrust of the dance. I found a ceramicist on the Upper West Side who made me a set of bisque plates that would break readily without creating harmful slivers that would hurt our bare feet.  Within the dance, each of the four dancers broke a plate at a certain juncture in the dance. This was done in a ceremonial ritual, in which, throughout the dance, a single dancer knelt down by a pre-set plate, slid her palms under the plate, stood up facing the audience and gazing at the plate, and then released the plate with parted hands, palms up, as the plate fell to the ground and shattered. I was the last to break a plate, and with mine, I spun with it in my hands for sometime before flinging it downstage to break.  With each broken plate, the ground we danced on became seemingly more dangerous, but we continued undeterred. 

It was the first work I presented at University of Michigan’s generous Power Center stage, soon after I arrived in 1985. It was a new experience to perform the work in this ample proscenium theater. Moreover, David Borden’s band was flown in to perform live at all four performances. The costumes, which I had originally sewn by hand, were remade by the professional costume shop at Power Center. Plates were created by Susannah Keith. I added bright colored tights to the original grey wraparound pants and grey or black leotard. Several different costumes were used over the years, including grey and black speckled tunics over grey tights, and shiny silver leotards and tights.

Fogel choreographic notes

Program excerpt, University of Michigan Power Center March 1985

Reviews:

Joann McNamara review The Ann Arbor News 9/28/88

Judy Gerstel review Detroit Free Press 1988

Doris Diether review The Villager April 30, 1987

Doris Diether review The Villager December 1986

Marianne Rudnicki review Ann Arbor News 1985

Choreobulletin review by David Wendt of December 1983 performance Hartwell Theater, SUNY Brockport

SUNY Brockport faculty dance concert review April 1984

Todd Theater University of Rochester 1984 review

Susanne Baum article ca 1985

Choreobulletin review by Karen Flynn April 1984