Photo by Peter Raper
liturgy: a rite or body of rites prescribed for public worship; a customary repertoire of ideas, phrases, or observances; a participatory public ritual.
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DEBORAH GOFFELITURGY | ORDER | BRIDGE
Bodies In Motion, 2020 Conceived by Deborah Goffe and performed with Lauren Horn and Arien Wilkerson, this ongoing process has centered dance as the organizing principle in a liturgy (a ritualized public ceremony) that is imagined to stir personal, interpersonal, and communal stuck places. Dance has long been leveraged as a way to reconcile the relationship between the expressive body, imagination, realms, liberatory practices, and aesthetic impulse. Here Goffe activates her own garden by visioning broadly and close to home. What might it mean to engage dance practice as faith practice, performance as communal ceremony, performance space as consecrated site, and the fellowship of shared witness, place, and inheritance? What are the possibilities of “feeling you feeling me.” |
"My current workspace is Holyoke, MA. In the months prior to this current global health crisis, I was engrossed in a relatively productive (and overwhelming) art making period. Right now, while learning to manage the bustle of my day job from home, I am trying to learn what this moment wants to teach me about the tyranny of productivity, and the desperate need to catch my breath. So, I cannot make great claims to prolific artistic activity at this time. Instead, I am thinking a lot about the ways the arts ecosystems (at every scale) will be forever changed by our current circumstances, what strategies we will employ to navigate the emerging new world, as well as what, how and why I might want to make next. We'll see."
DEBORAH GOFFE is a dance maker, performer, educator, and performance curator who cultivates environments and experiences through choreographic, design and social processes. Through Scapegoat Garden (a Connecticut-based creative engine) and other platforms, Deborah strives to forge relationships between artists and communities, helping people see, create and contribute to a greater vision of ourselves, each other, and the places we call home. Deborah’s work is also driven by her enduring commitment to the support of vibrant local dance ecologies, and the role of curatorial practice in that process. Her most recent research attends to the intersection of sustainable dance practice, locality, arts ecosystem formation, habits of perception, and black radical tradition(s). Together these commitments inform her work and teaching at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where she serves as Assistant Professor of Modern-Contemporary Dance.
WEBSITE: www.scapegoatgarden.org
Instagram: @scapegoatgarden
"My current workspace is Holyoke, MA. In the months prior to this current global health crisis, I was engrossed in a relatively productive (and overwhelming) art making period. Right now, while learning to manage the bustle of my day job from home, I am trying to learn what this moment wants to teach me about the tyranny of productivity, and the desperate need to catch my breath. So, I cannot make great claims to prolific artistic activity at this time. Instead, I am thinking a lot about the ways the arts ecosystems (at every scale) will be forever changed by our current circumstances, what strategies we will employ to navigate the emerging new world, as well as what, how and why I might want to make next. We'll see."
DEBORAH GOFFE is a dance maker, performer, educator, and performance curator who cultivates environments and experiences through choreographic, design and social processes. Through Scapegoat Garden (a Connecticut-based creative engine) and other platforms, Deborah strives to forge relationships between artists and communities, helping people see, create and contribute to a greater vision of ourselves, each other, and the places we call home. Deborah’s work is also driven by her enduring commitment to the support of vibrant local dance ecologies, and the role of curatorial practice in that process. Her most recent research attends to the intersection of sustainable dance practice, locality, arts ecosystem formation, habits of perception, and black radical tradition(s). Together these commitments inform her work and teaching at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where she serves as Assistant Professor of Modern-Contemporary Dance.
WEBSITE: www.scapegoatgarden.org
Instagram: @scapegoatgarden
