Mountaintop Removal

World Premiere of Cassie Meador’s How To Lose a Mountain

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Dance Place

Washington DC

March 16, 2013 at 8 p.m.

March 17, 2013 at 7 p.m.

Click here for tickets

This Spring, Dance Exchange Artistic Director Cassie Meador examines loss and gain, risk and reward, and the distances travelled by our stories, our stuff, and ourselves, in How To Lose a Mountain. The National Performance Network commissioned stage production is part of a multi-year choreographic project, which included a 500-mile walk and community engagement tour last spring.

One year prior to the How To Lose a Mountain world premiere, Meador investigated the resources that power by walking from her home in Washington, DC to a site of mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Along the way, she and Dance Exchange artists visited power plants, led movement and outdoor education workshops called “Moving Field Guides,” and collected stories from community members in workshops called “500 Miles/500 Stories.”

During this past year following the walk, Meador and her artistic collaborators returned to the studio to build the evening length work that addresses issues of use and reuse, of living in the now and honoring our past, of what we lose when we gain and what we gain when we lose. The piece features a few additional voices, including that of a 200-year-old piano that will play an unconventional role in How To Lose a Mountain.

How To Lose a Mountain is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center in partnership with Dance Place, Dance Exchange and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works.

 

John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Sheboygan, WI

April 25, 2013

The Electricity Fairy

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

The Electricity Fairy is a new film which approaches the issue of mountaintop removal from the everyday need for electricity:

“They reach out and flip the switch and the light comes on.  Well, there”s not a magic electricity fairy.  That electricity comes from a power plant that feeds on coal”.

But the question of coal-fired power is not a just a question for China and Appalachia, it is also a question for Scotland.  Should a major new coal-fired power station be built at Hunterston?

http://www.conchcampaign.org/

http://www.ayrshirepower.co.uk/

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland

4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire

4 1/2 HOURS: ACROSS THE STONES OF FIRE

Produced by The Coal Free Future Project benefiting The Appalachian Community Fund

Written by Jeff Biggers

Directed by Stephanie Pistello

When Marie and Hovie’s 150-year-old family homestead is threatened by a planned mountaintop removal operation they must come to grips with their conflicting fates. Will their love for each other and the land survive an epic journey “Across the Stones of Fire?”

Films & Visuals by Ben Evans

Purchase Tickets Here.

Running time: 60 minutes, no intermission

Venue: The Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street

Performance dates:

Tues 6/8 @ 5:30pm

Wed 6/9 @ 7:30pm

Sat 6/12 @ 12pm

Sun 6/13 @ 7pm

via 4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire (Planet_Connections).

APInews: New in Places To Study: Art and Environment, WVU

New in CAN’s Places To Study database is “Art and Environment,” a course taught by Erika Osborne at West Virginia University in Fall 2009. The multidisciplinary graduate and upper-division undergraduate studio/seminar course is designed to increase awareness for the interactivity of studio artists and the environment, including studio work and extensive field activity. Students will address topics such as micro-ecology with soil scientist Jeffrey Skousen; astronomy with physicist Boyd Edwards; organic agriculture with Steve and Sunshine Vortigern of Round Right Farm; permaculture with landscape architect Ashley Kyber; Kayford Mountain (a mountaintop removal site) with Larry Gibson of Keepers of the Mountains; acid mine drainage with Amanda Lachoski of Friends of Decker’s Creek; and art in Antarctica with artist Chris Kannen.

via APInews: New in Places To Study: Art and Environment, WVU .