During the Spring 2020 Sarah Lawrence Dance Program Performance Project, Elizabeth DeMent of Big Dance Theatre was to restage Annie-B Parson’s The Snow Falls in The Winter. The work is based loosely on the language and tone of the absurdist play, The Lesson, by Ionesco. Big Dance Theater is known for its inspired use of dance, music, text, and visual design.
The original work was created for the OtherShore Dance Company, originally featured SLC alum, Aaron Mattocks ’02, and was later danced by the Martha Graham Dance Company. Making use of Ionesco’s flat tonality, his simple sentences, and his stage directions, the piece is dark, ironic, and funny. The work involves weaving text and movement together.
Due to the inability to continue in-person rehearsals through the second half of the semester, Elizabeth DeMent and the students have reconfigured and recorded a new version of the work entitled The Snow Falls in The Winter, Adapted to the Small Screen(s) to fit the times in which we find ourselves. Elizabeth said, “Working with the original text and movement as our guide, we re-imagined the relationships of the characters to fit into squares on the screen, bringing the work into our living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms.This way of working has given us the opportunity to perform for one another and continue to live in the wonderfully absurd world created by Annie-B, Ionesco and a Global Pandemic.”
The Spring 2020 Dance Program Performance Project has been made possible with the generous support of the Barbara Bray Ketchum Artist-in-Residence Fund.