Solo Lecture Demonstrations
Description: In 1988, I presented an informal performance of my solos at the Irish Dance Council’s conference in Dublin, Ireland. In 1989, I received a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts to present a solo lecture demonstration at schools and community centers in Southeast Michigan. I used some of the grant to commission a new solo by Daniel McCusker, who came to Ann Arbor from Maine to set a work on me. He decided upon using poetry of Diane Wakoski. We traveled to Lansing, MI, to meet with Diane. She subsequently came to Ann Arbor to record herself reading the poem we used in the dance, entitled Duet. Waksoki’s poem, with a theme of lost love, informed the dance. To create it, Danny worked out duet material with me, and then removed himself from the dance, so that I was dancing with an absent person. Catlin Cobb’s Left Handed Woman was also included on the program, and I believe I brought Catlin to Ann Arbor from NYC to set the work on me. I also included three of my own solos: Chanticleer; Woman with a Pearl Drop Earring; and The Golden Chain. In at least one program, I included my solo Perennial and not Left Handed Woman, as per the scanned lec dem notes below. I presented the program in the following locations: Huron High School, Burns Park Senior Center, Pittsfield Senior Center, Community High School, Ann Arbor, MI; Interlochen Arts Camp, Interlochen, MI; the Michigan Dance Festival, CCS School of Art and Design, Detroit; and the Plymouth Cultural Center, Plymouth, MI.