Title: Naomi’s Dream
Premiere: Performed in the Barnard College Dance Annex, Marion Streng Studio, December 7, 1981
Performers: Eight dancers from Barnard College Dance Department, including Naomi Goldberg
Duration: 10 minutes
Music: Orlando de Lassus
Description: No video or photos exist that I know of. This was commissioned by the Barnard College Dance Department and created on students and performed in “An Informal Workshop” at the end of the Fall 1981 semester.. In rehearsals I noticed that one of the students, Naomi Goldberg, an accomplished NYCB-trained dancer, was often remote, gazing out the studio window. So I built that into the dance. For most of the work, she stood by the window looking outward. At the end she emerged in a long solo phrase set against the ensemble, that somehow accumulated and completed the puzzle of all the earlier movement phrases. This image of a woman gazing out a window stayed with me, and when a few years later I was looking at a book of Vermeer paintings, I was especially drawn to the positioning of women standing at windows.