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Published on January 27, 2023

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The Bates Dance Festival has been recommended by the National Endowment for the Arts to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $40,000.

The grant will support the 2023 edition of the internationally renowned performance series, which this year takes place on the Bates campus July 7–29. 

Bates Dance Festival performance at Lake Andrews on Monday, July 11, 2022. Fist & Heel Performance Group …together, they stood shaking, while others began to shout Mon, July 11, 7 pm Lake Andrews Tickets Available June 1st Join Fist & Heel Performance Group, Bates Dance Festival students and faculty members, and community members from all around Southern and Central Maine in a devised performance using dances from the company’s Shaker-inspired work Power. Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. Our performance work is a continued manifestation of the rhythm languages of the body provoked by the spiritual and the mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora, including the Blues, Slave and Gospel idioms. The group has received support from major foundations and corporations and has performed at notable venues in the United States and abroad. In the spirit of building equitable relationships with our community partners, Bates Dance Festival would like to acknowledge the intellectual, creative and administrative labor that Indigo Arts Alliance has contributed to the fulfilment of Reggie Wilson’s residency. We could not have successfully executed community outreach and connections for all of the programs without the expertise of Indigo Arts Alliance.
The 2022 Bates Dance Festival hosted a performance along Lake Andrews by Fist & Heel Performance Group, a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

“We are very grateful for the continued support from the National Endowment for the Arts,” said Bates Dance Festival Director Shoshona Currier. “This funding helps us bring talented, diverse, world-class artists to Lewiston to share their technique, choreography, and experiences  in order to inspire our community here in Maine as well as the next generation of dancers and dance makers from around the country.”

The festival is one of 19 Maine arts organizations that learned about grants from the NEA this month. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million as part of NEA’s first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.

“We are very grateful for the continued support from the National Endowment for the Arts,” said Bates Dance Festival Director Shoshona Currier, seen introducing a dance performance during the 2022 festival. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson. “Projects such as the Bates Dance Festival strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”

This year marks the 41st season for the Bates Dance Festival, which draws dance students from all over the world, and from the Bates student body itself.

An upper-level Bates course, “Bates Dance Festival,” provides students an opportunity to participate in the festival’s  Professional Training Program and receive invaluable technical training across multiple dance disciplines and theoretical practices from leading dance scholars, artists, and practitioners in their fields. 

Shura Baryshnikov teaches a class titled “World Builtind” outside and inside of the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building on July 21, 2022. “In this workshop, we’ll be investigating techniques for collaborative making and co-authorship of choreographies. Drawing primarily from the Viewpoints Technique, Moment Work, Action Theatre, and Lecoq-based devising methods, we will investigate the theatrical depths available to us in our dancemaking. Through investigations of architecture, light, prop, costume, and text, we will weave/quilt/layer these elements of the stage to craft theatrical narrative that supports the dance. We will work to build frameworks to contain set phrase material, the creation of spontaneous choreographies, and the dialogue between the two modes of creation and performance. Let’s allow poetries and emergent vocabularies to lead us into our daily worldbuilding. Please bring prop/light/costume/text materials to Bates for our in-studio “kit” for creation!” Baryshnikov (she/her/hers) is a multimodal artist who works broadly as a dancer/actor/improviser, somatic movement educator, director, and choreographer for projects across dance, theatre, opera, and film. Recent engagements include projects with Boston Lyric Opera, Khambatta Dance Company, and Urbanity Dance and creative collaborations with musicians Adrienne Taylor as well Daniel Bernard Roumain and FirstWorks. Shura has co-founded a number of dance projects, including the Contact Improvisation research and performance ensemble Set Go with dancers Paul Singh, Sarah Konner, Aaron Brandes, and Bradley Teal Ellis, and has recently collaborated with dancemakers Gabriel Forestieri, Heidi Henderson, Betsy Miller, and Danielle Davidson. Shura is Head of Physical Theatre for the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Program in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University and maintains an active international teaching practice at festivals and training institutions. Ultimately in pursuit of interdisciplinary processes that support improvisatory frameworks and profound somatic sensitivity, she employs work in the Viewpoints Technique, Safety Release Technique, Action Theater, and Contact Improvisation to create deeply-sensitized, collaborative spaces for learning and making. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and the American Guild of Musical Artists.
Shura Baryshnikov, a multimodal artist who maintains an active international teaching practice at festivals and training institutions, conducts a Dance Festival workshop outside the Gray Athletic Building on July 21, 2022, that investigated techniques for collaborative making and co-authorship of choreographies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

In 2022, about a half-dozen Bates students earned academic credit for participating in the festival. And typically, Bates also offers a paid Purposeful Work internship at the annual festival.

Currier, who joined the festival as director in 2017, has worked to broaden the festival’s reach pre-pandemic by staging performances in the streets of Portland, and during the pandemic, made adaptations that featured dancers in open spaces in the local community, including downtown Lewiston parks and the banks of the Androscoggin River. 

Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College
During the 2021 festival, Purposeful Work intern Jamari Amrham ’22 of Fontana, Calif., escorts a dancer swathed in quilts through traffic on Pine Street in Lewiston during a tech rehearsal for a site-specific work by choreographer Emily Johnson and her company, Catalyst, that evokes themes of Indigenous power and place. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

“We’ve got some great performances and works in progress showings planned for this summer as well, and are committed to keeping the festival as accessible as possible, ” Currier said. “The festival serves approximately 5,000 people each year, and I cannot wait to share more details about our 2023 summer season with everyone soon!”

Bates Dance Festival performance at Lake Andrews on Monday, July 11, 2022. Fist & Heel Performance Group …together, they stood shaking, while others began to shout Mon, July 11, 7 pm Lake Andrews Tickets Available June 1st Join Fist & Heel Performance Group, Bates Dance Festival students and faculty members, and community members from all around Southern and Central Maine in a devised performance using dances from the company’s Shaker-inspired work Power. Fist & Heel Performance Group is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. Our performance work is a continued manifestation of the rhythm languages of the body provoked by the spiritual and the mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora, including the Blues, Slave and Gospel idioms. The group has received support from major foundations and corporations and has performed at notable venues in the United States and abroad. In the spirit of building equitable relationships with our community partners, Bates Dance Festival would like to acknowledge the intellectual, creative and administrative labor that Indigo Arts Alliance has contributed to the fulfilment of Reggie Wilson’s residency. We could not have successfully executed community outreach and connections for all of the programs without the expertise of Indigo Arts Alliance.

A dancer with Fist & Heel Performance Group performs at the Keigwin Amphitheater along Lake Andrews during the 2022 Bates Dance Festival. Fist & Heel is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)
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