Welcome We’ve missed you! After canceling our 2020 Yard Arts Summer Season, we got to work imagining new ways of programming in a pandemic. The safety of our community has been our north star, guiding our planning and decision-making at every step of the way. This summer, six choreographers and their collaborators will have the opportunity to develop new work at The Yard. This publication is an invitation to get to know those artists and their work. Some of them may be familiar to you. They are returning to The Yard as part of multi-year collaborations, which provide continuity of support and foster lasting relationships within our community. Some are creating work inspired directly by the rich history of our island. Some are planting the seeds of new projects. All are provoking questions about the human experience. Artists are harbingers of what can be, storytellers of what has been, and cultivators of nowness. After a year of extreme suffering and social isolation, we have never been more grateful for artists. They are our vital partners in healing and visioning. We cannot wait to share the work of our artists in residence with you. A mix of in-person and online performances and other community programs will be announced throughout the summer. Want to be the first to hear? Visit our website (dancetheyard. org) and join our email list (under “About”), or follow us on social media. See you this summer! With gratitude, The Yard’s Staff www.dancetheyard.org
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About The Yard The Yard is a creation and performance platform for local, national, and international artists with a focus on contemporary dance. We offer paid residencies, performances, and wide-ranging educational experiences for all ages including in Martha’s Vineyard schools. With programs on our campus in Chilmark and in partner locations across the island, we provide year-round opportunities for our community to come together and be inspired.
Our Commitment The COVID-19 pandemic threw into sharp relief many inequities in the field of dance and in our country. Last summer, The Yard’s staff and Board of Directors made a public commitment to playing an active role in dismantling racism and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Since then, we have provided antiracism and cultural competence training for our team, overhauled our artist contracts to share risk more equitably, developed a curricular unit that teaches about social justice through hip-hop, invested in the work of BIPOC artists, and more. We know these actions are a drop in the ocean, and we commit to going deeper and further in this work.
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Residencies at The Yard For nearly 50 years, The Yard has provided creative residencies for choreographers and dance companies. The pandemic gave us an opportunity to pause, recalibrate, and listen to what artists need in this moment. All of the residencies in this summer’s season were co-designed with the artists. Input from our colleagues in the field also shaped them. We are grateful to the residency centers that pioneered the pandemic era “bubble” residency, which gave us a model for this summer. A stringent COVID-19 policy has been created to help ensure the safety of our artists, staff, and community. It includes quarantining and testing requirements prior to arrival, and all artists are traveling to The Yard in cars to minimize exposure. Companies will form pods for the duration of their residencies, living and working in a sequestered environment (or “bubble”) on our campus. While in residence, artists have nearly unlimited access to our studio and theater. They receive direct support from our team in technical production, videography, and marketing. With each residency, we strive to meet the choreographer’s unique needs and be collaborators in their creative process. All of our residencies are paid. We offer $1,000/week to choreographers and $800/week to their collaborators. We stock our kitchens with food staples to supplement a $150/week food stipend. We cover travel, housing, production supplies, and—last but most certainly not least—beach passes to Lucy Vincent. Through residencies, The Yard enables and amplifies the work of artists. This has always been the backbone of our mission.
Company SBB // Stefanie Batten Bland June 1st - June 21st
Christal Brown & Lida Winfield June 22nd - june 28th
Raphael Xavier June 29th - July 12th
Danza Orgánica and Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Members July 13th - July 26th
Netta Yerushalmy June 27th - August 16th
Jenna Pollack August 17th - August 31st
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Company SBB // Stefanie Batten BlanD In Residence June 1 - 21, 2021 Company SBB // Stefanie Batten Bland is an intercontinental dance-theatre company whose interdisciplinary creations for stages, spaces, and films question contemporary and historical cultural symbolism - and the complexities of human relationships. Batten Bland came across the Martha’s Vineyard African American Heritage Trail during her first residency at The Yard in 2016, and it inspired her new work. Batten Bland has conducted research on the Vineyard in the years since, including in the archives of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. The result is Embarqued: Stories of Our Soil, an installation based dancetheater work seeped in island history. Embarqued centers around a performative shipmast that invites reflection and reveals post-colonial foundations and mythology. The work interrogates existing relationships to memorials and calls up African ancestral stories, enabling us to viscerally and holistically connect our country both forwards and backwards in space and time and through soil itself. Batten Bland’s residency will culminate in preview performances of Embarqued at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.
The Yard is a Partner of the National Performance Network (NPN). This project is made possible in part by support from the NPN Artist Engagement Fund. Major contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information visit www.npnweb.org.
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Christal Brown & Lida Winfield In Residence June 22 - 28, 2021 Yard alumna Lida Winfield returns to the Vineyard with Christal Brown to develop Same But Different. Encompassing live performance, film, and even a podcast, Same But Different explores the similarities and differences between Christal and Lida in a cultural commentary on race, age, and gender. 42 years young and recently orphaned, Lida grew up in the North. Christal grew up in the South. Both of them grew up inhabiting small towns. Lida is white and Christal is black. As children, Christal was considered a genius and Lida was labeled dumb. At this point in their lives, Lida and Christal have both lived the rigors of being artists, professors, educators, and survivors of life. Christal is a mover and a warrior of change and transformation. She combines her athleticism, creativity, love for people, and passion for teaching to create works that redefine the art of dance, the creation of identity, and structures of power. Lida is an innovative and accomplished dancer, choreographer, spoken word artist, and educator. Her pedagogy is rooted in inclusion, access, and the recognition that our brains and bodies work differently and this difference is a valuable asset. Lida’s latest completed work, IMAGINARY, will be available to stream during the week of her residency.
Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies. IMAGINARY is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Middlebury College, and The Yard. For more information: www.npnweb.org Same But Different was commissioned by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, with support from the National Performance Network and the Middlebury Performing Arts Series and Process Pass holders.
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Raphael Xavier In Residence June 29 - July 12, 2021 Distilling the art of Breaking to its purest form, Raphael Xavier (pronounced ZAH-vee-ay) takes this movement vocabulary to uncharted territory. For the past 20+ years, Xavier has explored Breaking as social, physical, and mental “movement.” He has forged an exceptional approach to improvisation—expanding both dancer and audience expectations—and cleared the path for those interested in Breaking as an artform. Xavier is a multifaceted creator who draws inspiration from his many talents in dance, music, photography, and writing. His original works are a transcendent mix of poetry, precision, and spontaneity. He returns to The Yard to continue creating XAVIER’S: The Musician and The Mover, which highlights the traditions of freestyle and improvisation in both Breaking and Jazz. He will be joined by a saxophonist, bassist, pianist, percussionist, and dancers.
The presentation of Raphael Xavier was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Danza Orgánica and Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Members In Residence July 13 - 26, 2021 Danza Orgánica is a dance theater company that creates antiracist, antipatriarchal, and decolonizing work. Through high-quality performance, education (Dance for Social Justice™), and the annual festival We Create, they work with-and-for communities interested in embodying a liberated future. They honor the right to express our BIPOC experience, joyfully reimagine ourselves in liberated BIPOC bodies, and leave a legacy that sheds light upon an untold side of history. Danza Orgánica first connected with members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe during their 2018 residency at The Yard. Since then, the two groups have been collaborating to create âs nupumukâunean (We Still Dance), which highlights traditional and contemporary stories of the Aquinnah Wampanoag People through dance, song, installation, and storytelling. They continue their work this summer in a two-week residency. Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies. Supported in part by a grant from the Western Arts Alliance Advancing Indigenous Performance Touring Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Yard is a Partner of the National Performance Network (NPN). This project is made possible in part by support from NPN. Major contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information visit www.npnweb.org.
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Netta Yerushalmy In Residence July 27 - August 16, 2021 Netta Yerushalmy aims to engage with audiences by imparting the sensation of things as they are perceived, not as they are known, and to challenge how meaning is attributed and constructed. Originally from Galilee, Israel, Yerushalmy now lives in New York. Her work has been presented by Jacob’s Pillow, New York Live Arts, American Dance Festival, Joyce Theater, Alvin Ailey ADT, Guggenheim Museum, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Danspace Project, among others. “Netta Yerushalmy is changing our view of modern masterpieces” (Dance Magazine), and she continues her groundbreaking work at The Yard with MOVEMENT. MOVEMENT is a new evening-length dance work that “steals” movement quotes from an expansive range of dance across genres, cultures, and idioms, in order to experiment with pluralism and discord as guiding creative and political principles. The project features a bifurcated electronic sound score from two potent female composers and performances from seven stunning dancers who hail from Sri Lanka, Senegal, Israel, Taiwan, and across the USA.
MOVEMENT is currently in development with support from City Center Ballet, Dance Initiative, Dance NYC, the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), New Music USA, and The Yard.
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Jenna Pollack In Residence August 17 - 31, 2021 Jenna Pollack is an international freelance choreographer, performer, and educator whose creative practice spans the realms of dance, theatre, engineering, film, site, and cultural organizing. Her choreographic inquiries broadly explore the poetics of purpose and the purpose of play. Her work is held by a wider practice in support of a more sustainable arts ecosystem at the intersection of performance, institutional dramaturgy, and distributed leadership. Pollack offers embodied practices for physical listening, reflexive imagination, rigorous play, and the mobilization of community. At the core of Pollack’s work is a commitment to collaboration. This summer at The Yard, she brings together a diverse group of eight collaborators to embark on a new creative process. They come from the realms of dance, film, performance art, engineering, and sound design. This residency will be the first time this group of eight has worked on the same project, and their relationship to one another will provide the groundwork for creativity.
Support THe Yard The Yard is committed to supporting the creative process because we know experiencing arts and culture is essential to building a better world. In this time when artists have reported* a personal income loss of over 30 million dollars in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts alone due to COVID-19, The Yard is investing in these arts workers who provide immense cultural value to our community. Join us today in fostering creativity, healing, and joy.
visit dancetheyard.org/donation *Massachusetts Cultural Council 2021 Survey Results
Knowing we’re getting taken care of from top to bottom — space, pay, marketing, housing, food stipends, tangible care — to research something totally new is something I have yet to experience at the front of the studio, and I couldn’t imagine this first taste being in partnership with any other organization. Most important to me is the fact that the residency pays me and all of my collaborators a fair wage for a research process for an emerging choreographer. This profound contribution to the dance ecosystem cannot be overstated. Thank you, Yard!
- Jenna POllack
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Staff & Board Chloe Jones Executive Director Ali Geroche Development Manager Joshua Bristow Marketing & Communications Manager Harrison Pearse Burke Production Manager & Resident Lighting Designer Andrea Sala Assistant Production Manager Jace Arouet Intern Garrett Parker Staff Videographer Sally Cohn Staff Photographer Julie Rooney Media
Michele Sasso President Charlotte Hall Vice President Joyce Thornhill Treasurer Martha Hart Eddy, PhD Kurt Holm Jill Karp Elizabeth Keen Courtney Lee David Parker Deborah Sale Rise Terney Sig Van Raan
Shored Up Digital Social Media Management
The Bookkeeping Bureau Bookkeeping
Dancing Camera Video Production
M.B. Flanders & Co. Property Management
The Yard’s 2021 summer season is supported in part by the Jerome A. and Estelle R. Newman Assistance Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. Significant in-kind support is provided by Island Source, Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, and Dottie’s Potties.
2021 Local Business Sponsors
Credits Photos (Cover) Danza Orgánica and Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Members, photo courtesy of artist; Netta Yerushalmy, photo by Maria Baranova; Jenna Pollack, photo by Jenny Bergman; (Page 4) The Yard, photo by Julie Rooney; (Page 5) Stefanie Batten Bland, photo by Emmanuel Bastien; Lida Winfield and Christal Brown, photo by JHsu Media; Raphel Xavier, photo courtesy of artist; Mar Parrilla, photo courtesy of artist; Netta Yerushalmy, photo by Maria Baranova; Jenna Pollack, photo by Jenny Bergman; (Page 6 - 7) Netta Yerushalmy, photo by Maria Baranova; (Page 8) Stefanie Batten Bland, photo by Emmanuel Bastien; (Page 10) Christal Brown and Lida Winfield, photo by JHsu Media; (Page 12) Raphel Xavier, photo courtesy of artist; (Page 14) Danza Orgánica and Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal Members, photo courtesy of artist; (Page 16) Netta Yerushalmy, photo by Maria Baranova; (Page 18) Jenna Pollack, photo by Jenny Bergman; (Page 20) Jenna Pollack, photo by Jenny Bergman; (Page 23) Company SBB //Stefanie Batten Bland, photo by Emmanuel Bastien
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Graphic Design by Julie Rooney, Printing by Tisbury Printer
I think it is always exciting to finish something that has been started. I’m looking forward to completing this research and work that has been in development since 2017. The Yard will allow us, within a COVID context, to create indoor and outdoor iterations of this new work that explores the complex relationship that land, voyage and textiles play within African American and thus American identities.
- Stefanie Batten Bland, Company SBB // Stefanie Batten BlanD
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info@dancetheyard.org
PO Box 405 Chilmark, MA 02535
For ticket information, visit dancetheyard.org