Residency

Residency

The Denmark Arts Center hosts artists from around the country and world for residencies in beautiful Denmark, Maine. Through community support and donations, the DAC provides studio space, and presentation for artists during a one week-long residency. Artists-in-residence often provide arts education programs through DAC workshops, summer camps. By hosting visiting artists-in-residence, the Denmark Arts Center aims to develop creative skills in our local community.

Prior Artists-in-Residence

Hio Ridge Dance
Hio Ridge Dance is the platform for the creative work of dancers Cookie Harrist and Delaney McDonough. Based in Denmark, Maine, the dancers build original performance works with visiting collaborators and community members of all ages. Their work experiments in post-modern, anti-modern and queer practices in order to uncover improvised or set moments with heat. Through trial-and-error in the studio and performance, Cookie and Delaney arrange these moments into the arc of a dance. Their work has been presented at 3S Artspace (NH), AUNTS (NY), SALTA (CA), MAX10 (CA), Franco-American Heritage Center (ME), Colby College (ME), Marlboro College (VT), Waterman’s Community Center (ME), Vinalhaven School (ME), Gowanus Guest Room (NY), Eastport Arts Center (ME), and many more. www.hioridgedance.com

Previous Projects @ the DAC:
Reasons for Moving: An Evening of Dance Made in Denmark, featuring local collaborators and performers aged 4 to 80

Placeholders: A Dance About Denmark, featuring young dancers of the DAC dance summer camp

Brotherhood Dance
Brother(Hood) Dance! is an interdisciplinary duo that seeks to inform its audiences on the socio-political and environmental injustices from a global perspective, bringing clarity to the same-gender-loving African-American experience in the 21st century. We collect individual and collective experiences, and use them to look at the cross-cultural intersections of how our bodies as queer African-American and Caribbean-American men relate in spaces that are confined and restricting to one’s self. Brother(hood) Dance! was formed in April 2014 as a duo that research, create and perform dances of freedom by Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine.  Brother(hood) Dance! uses an African diasporic aesthetic to create a multidimensional experience that includes text, audio and video content  movement, and audience engagement to translate our stories into history. We have performed our works at FiveMyles, Center for Performance Research, VCU-The Grace Street Theater, DraftWork at St. Marks Church, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) and other venues.

Tommy Arsenault
Tommy Arsenault is a performance artist, dancer, and criminal justice advocate. He works within the participatory performance pedagogy of Augusto Boal and the dance technique of contact improvisation. Tommy currently acts as Assistant Director of Marlboro College’s Speech Matters program, an intensive on criminal justice reform, and largely makes interactive performance works that explore navigating power and cultivating resiliency in the modern Western world.

Tall Girls Dancing
(Doug LeCours and Sara Gibbons)

DOUG LeCours is a Brooklyn-based performer and artist. His work spans the mediums of dance, writing, and video performance art. He has presented his work at various venues including Middlebury College (VT), Smith College (MA), the M Gallery (VT), Movement Research Open Performance (NYC), WAXWorks (NYC), Otion Front Studio (NYC), and at ImPulsTanz through the ATLAS program. Along with making his own work he collaborates and performs with Sara Gibbons/TALL GIRLS DANCING. He graduated from Middlebury College. Recent performance credits include works by Paul Matteson and Scotty Hardwig. He is currently involved in processes with Megan Bascom and Alexandra Beller.

SARA GIBBONS is New York based dancer/actor/improviser. She graduated from Colby, Magna Cum Laude, in May 2015 after working with guest artists such as Alex Springer & Xan Burley, Kendra Portier, Paul Matteson, Heidi Henderson, and Adriana Durant. Her work has been twice presented at ACDA, and was selected for the 2014 New England gala concert. Sara has performed professionally in work by Kendra Portier|BANDPortier and Annie Kloppenberg and has presented her own choreography in New York and Boston. She now lives in New York where she is apprenticing with David Dorfman Dance, developing her own work, and working with her long time collaborator Doug LeCours. www.tallgirlsdancing.com

Janoah Ballin

Marrow Collective
The Marrow Collective is a group of four artists residing in Marlboro, Vermont, comprising Liza Mitrofanova, Nancy Son, Eric Dennis and Mairead Delaney. Individually, our work spans across a wide range of media including performance, installation, sculpture, ceramics, writing, and two-dimensional work. In forming this collective, we seek to support each other’s creative drive and collaborate intimately on projects, some of which are meant for public showing and others for personal growth and exploration. By layering, altering, and weaving personal responses, we attempt to explore human experience through the limited, combined lens of four human beings.

Laurel Snyder
Laurel Snyder is an independent Dance Artist, Educator and occasional Musician based in Brooklyn, NY. She received the majority of her physical training at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and various dance festivals throughout the USA and Europe. As a performer, Laurel is privileged to currently collaborate with Tere O’Connor, Tatyana Tenenbaum and Kendra Portier’s BAND/Portier. Laurel’s choreography has been shared at spaces such as the Tank, H.T. Chen’s Newsteps series, Triskelion Arts, White Wave, Greenspace, Center for Performance Research (CPR), Chez Bushwick, the FRESH Festival (San Francisco, CA), Deltebre Dansa (Spain) and Ponderosa (Germany). Laurel has been a guest teaching artist at organizations such as CLASSCLASSCLASS (NYC), Mark Morris Dance Center (Brooklyn, NY) the ADF Studios (Durham, NC) the Dance Exchange (Washington, DC), Colby College (Waterville, Maine), Henrico Performing Arts High School (Richmond, VA) and Leviathan Studio (Lasqueti, British Columbia). www.laurelsnyderdance.com

Ruckus Dance
Michael Figueroa has a B.F.A. in Dance from the Boston Conservatory. He has been dancing for roughly 14 years. As of recently, he has enjoyed couch surfing in the Greater Boston area. He is engaged by the work of Trisha Brown, Miguel Gutierrez, Yvonne Rainer, Keith Hennessy, Brian Brooks, Doug Varone and several others. Michael is able to touch his toes. Michael has worked with x, y, z choreographers, but never long-term. He isn’t afraid of commitment, but it’s hard for people to want to commit to him. Michael would make a poor 1st grade teacher, as he does not like kids, cannot teach fine motor skills, and does not appreciate undistilled truth. If he were an animal, he would most likely be a sea otter, or possibly an opossum. Michael was a competitive jazz dancer. He still doesn’t understand the word ballet. He started a company during September 2015: www.ruckusdance.wordpress.com

Brittany Rolfs