Dance Company of Middlebury presents Willow’s Apothecary

Acclaimed poet Arisa White and choreographer Laurel Jenkins direct Willow’s Apothecary, featuring The Dance Company of Middlebury College with live electronic music by McLean Macionis and cello by Robin Lane.

Inspired by the rich mythological world of White’s Post Pardon: The Opera, Willow’s Apothecary blends poetry, text, and movement to conjure the medicine needed to evoke intergenerational healing.

This January Dance Company will tour to Portland, ME and will Co-presented by Indigo Arts Alliance and Mechanics’ Hall, in partnership with Middlebury College and Colby College.

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Arisa White
“She approaches words as reference points, rather than endpoints. By reimagining language, she exerts control over her sense of self.” — Los Angeles Review of Books

By blending literary genres and artistic collaborations, acclaimed poet Arisa White explores the possibilities of what a poem can be and do. In her practice, the poem becomes an opportunity to defamiliarize language, create new meanings, and use personal narratives as sites for somatic, cultural, and social inquiry. White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College and the author of several poetry collections, which were nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, California Book Award, Wheatley Book Award, and won the Maine Literary Book Award, and Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal.

A member of PlayGround Writers Pool at Berkeley Repertory Theater from 2011-2013, Arisa was awarded an Emerging Playwrights Award in 2011. Commissioned by the Queer Cultural Center in San Francisco, Arisa co-produced three collaborative multidisciplinary performances for the National Queer Arts Festival. She received a 2013-14 Cultural Funding grant from the City of Oakland to create the libretto and score for Post Pardon: The Opera and a summer lab residency from The Ground Floor. Her poetic dramas are published by DelMonico Books and The New Press and were staged in the Annual Best of PlayGround Festival, One-Minute Play Festival, and FlashPlays! Festival, and LezWrites Festival.

As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Community Advisory Board. Currently in development with composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is working on Post Pardon: The Opera.

Laurel Jenkins
“Laurel Jenkins is a study in fluid energy.” — Dance Magazine

Laurel Jenkins is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and mother. Her choreography emerges from rigorous experimentation and interdisciplinary dialogues in contemporary dance, opera, music, and theater. LA Weekly writes that she creates “extraordinary movement/sound pieces in which the body becomes the most versatile of instruments, playing the music of an invisible dimension.” Through an ever-evolving choreographic process, Jenkins reimagines the contours of our collective experience by engaging themes of individual interiority, human relationships, and our connection with that which is beyond human. Jenkins’ work has been presented by Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, REDCAT, Automata, the Getty Center, Show Box LA, Danspace, Berlin’s Performing Presence Festival, Tokyo’s Sezane Gallery, and Paris’ Cité Internationale des Arts. She choreographed Bernstein’s MASS with the LA Phil and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. In addition, she has choreographed for LA Contemporary Dance Company, The Wooden Floor, and many universities, including UNL.

Jenkins was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012 and has danced in works by Vicky Shick and Sara Rudner. Jenkins performed in the opera Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms by Peter Sellars and solos by Merce Cunningham in the Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event. Jenkins received a Vermont Arts Council Grant, an Asian Cultural Council Grant, and a French Institute Fellowship; she holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence, an MFA from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, and is certified to teach the Skinner Releasing Technique. She is an Associate Professor and Chair of Dance at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Tickets: https://www.middlebury.edu/college/box-office