Jane Franklin Dance at Waterfront Park
The City of Alexandria’s Office of the Arts is pleased to announce that it was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to fund its community Artist Residency Program. The Artist Residency Program integrates visual and performing artists in the community to conduct interactive art engagements at the Waterfront Park public art initiative Site See. As part of the Artist Residency Program, Jane Franklin Dance was selected to bring interpretive movement pieces inspired by the artwork to the Waterfront Park.
Highlighted by spoken word, Jane Franklin’s Shake interweaves dance with spoken word poetry by Bennie Herron. In Drums, performers accumulate through movement, rhythm and cadence and celebrate during interjected slices of silence. In part II a trio vibrates with the joy of electric energy. Spoken word by artist Bennie Herron adds memory to the narrative as three poems, “Connected,” “Powdered Milk,” “Summertime ” bring forward images of childhood.
Inspired by an art installation by Nina Cooke John for Waterfront Park, Jane Franklin Dance explores the installation and the layered history it represents through movement, dance, and spoken word. “Archaeologists exploring the Alexandria waterfront in 2015 and 2018, in advance of the ongoing redevelopment, discovered the remains of four vessels that were sunk on the Potomac mudflats in the latter part of the 18th-century as part of a process to extend Alexandria’s shoreline.”
A manifest lists passengers and commodities on a ship that came or left from the Port of Alexandria in 1792. Words from the ships’ manifest appear on the orange lines in the installation and on the vertical elements that directly work with the proportions of the body. Dancers respond. Movement activates the installation revealing a hint of a fuller truth, “imaging what it could have been like being outside of that hull, outside of that space of history, or outside of that time and looking back,” Nina Cooke John.
Jane Franklin Dance partners with music, media, visual artists and community participants. Jane Franklin Dance has been presented at multiple venues and festivals and internationally in Mexico. A recipient of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region Creative Communities Award, Jane has developed innovative and collaborative projects combining dancers with the round wall skateboarding community, with a life size kinetic sculpture, with the architecture of a specific site, with dogs & owners, and with interactive live video and sound for numerous public art projects. Jane Franklin is a recipient of the American Association of University Women Elizabeth Campbell Award for the Advancement of the Arts in Arlington, and her video work Four Mile Run Footbridge was selected for PHOTO/VIDEO 13: Juried Mid-Atlantic Exhibition. Jane Franklin Dance has been recognized by Virginia’s Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. The company tours for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Paul Mellon Arts in Education Program and the Virginia Commission’s Tour Directory.
Jane Franklin Dance will be at Waterfront Park for FREE performances October 13, 14, 19, & 26 at 7 pm. Click here to learn more.