Feet to the Fire Commissions

Commissions

Works Commissioned from Visiting Artists

Works Commissioned from Wesleyan Faculty

Hari Krishnan: Liquid Shakti

As a part of the Spring Faculty Dance Concert, Indian dance artist-in-residence, Hari Krishnan, premiered a solo work inspired by the myth of the river goddess Ganga which responds to the depletion of natural resources by aggressive industrialization, told from the point of view of some of the most vulnerable populations.
Ron Kuivila: The Weather, at Six

Wesleyan University was the site of a new sound installation that bridged the gap between thinking about global climate change and experiencing it. Professor of Music Ron Kuivila’s sound installation The Weather, at Six employed the synthesized sound of the carillon bells in Wesleyan’s South College bell tower to create a sonic interpretation of weather data collected for the current day’s date over 130 years. Each day’s “piece” ran between 5 and 15 minutes. Every day at 6pm, speakers mounted in the bell tower in Wesleyan’s South College played “today’s weather” with rhythmic structure derived from the pattern of rainy (or snowy) days and bell selections following the contour of daily temperature readings.
Alvin Lucier: Glacier

Experimental music professor and seminal artist of the sound art movement Alvin Lucier presented his commissioned work for solo cello.
Nicole Stanton and Gina Ulysse: Threshold Sites: Skin to Skin

Nicole Stanton, associate professor of dance, will premiere her commissioned work, Threshold Sites: Skin to Skin, a collaboration with Gina Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology. It looks at the ways in which choreographic processes can explore and address the social and cultural issues that contribute to lack of ecological awareness. The piece features several dance faculty members as performers/collaborators and will be performed in the new green performance space in the Bessie Schonberg Studio. The event will also feature a piece performed by Wesleyan students entitled “Threshold Sites: Body and Earth” collaboratively developed by Stanton and Ulysse with Michael Singer, assistant professor of biology and Andrea Olsen, chair of the dance program at Middlebury College.