The Apprenticeship Project

May 9, 2012

7-10pm (the audience is welcome to enter and leave at any time)

510 State Rd # 1  North Adams, MA (former Family Billiards)

Admission is Free

Free shuttle van from behind the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College to the performance at 7pm (returning at 8:30) and 8:30 (returning at 10:15)

Apprenticeship Project, a collectively-created performance installation featuring 34 performers engaged in a variety of activities from painting, carpentry, botany, and Tai Chi, to spoken word, music, dance, meditation, and other actions that cultivate and exhibit kinesthetic trust and sensitivity. The audience will have the opportunity to view the event from a variety of vantage points for as long or short as they like, as well as to participate in the project by receiving a Reiki treatment, getting a haircut, or contributing to the creation of an experimental music composition.

17 Williams College students from a variety of courses of study have been engaged in semester-long, 1-to-1, mutual apprenticeships with residents of Williamstown, North Bennington, and North Adams. The group of local residents includes a composer, a Zumba enthusiast, a painter, a massage therapist, a former acrobat, a farmer, a harmonica player, and a beekeeper, among others. They have been teaching aspects of their skills to the Williams students while the students have been leading their partners in a variety of movement- and music-based exercises drawn from the fine art/dance course they are taking this semester entitled Perceptual Intelligence. Existing at the boundaries of conceptual art, sculpture, theatre, dance, and country fair, The Apprenticeship Project is the performative culmination of this exciting process of exchange.

The Apprenticeship Project features Day Acheson, Laura Berk, Cedar Blazek, Deborah Brown, Karen Brown, Guedis Cardenas, Monel Chang, John Eladd, Susannah Emerson, Linda Finney, Melany Funes, Tracy Hu, Audrey Kwon, David Lachman, Marli La Grone, Mark Maniak, Nicole Methot, Anna Moriarty-Lev, Karl Mullen, Felicia Pharr,  Amanda Reid, Randy Reyes, Sean Riley, Hannah Rojo, Pedro Roque, Evalynn Rosado, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Edward Snyder, Karen Trubitt, Emily Wendell, Emmanuel Whyte, Thor Wickstrom, Dane Wilson, and Shira Wohlberg.

Concept and Direction: Hana van der Kolk, Arthur Levitt ’52 Artist-in-Residence at Williams College

Lighting Design: Chris Kuhl

Assistant Director: Asher Woodworth