Bates Dance Festival
| Bates Dance Festival | |
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Schaeffer Theatre
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| Genre | Dance festival |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Venue | Bates College |
| Location(s) | Lewiston, Maine, United States |
| Coordinates | 44°06′25″N 70°12′21″W / 44.106909°N 70.205962°WCoordinates: 44°06′25″N 70°12′21″W / 44.106909°N 70.205962°W |
| Inaugurated | 1982 |
| Founder |
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| Website | |
| www |
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The Bates Dance Festival is a dance festival held annually at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, United States. The program runs during the summer months and includes workshops and performances.
The Bates Dance Festival brings together an international community of choreographers, performers, educators and students to study, perform and create new work. The festival fosters an exchange of ideas, encouraging exploration of new ground and providing opportunities to experience a wide spectrum of dance/movement disciplines. Artists, students and audiences share their knowledge and inspiration through workshops, jams, discussions, informal showings and performances.
The Bates Dance Festival consists of four programs:
In 1982, Marcy Plavin, Professor of Dance Emeritus at Bates College, was approached by Hedley Reynolds, then-president of Bates, about establishing a dance festival on campus as a way to use the largely vacant facilities during the summer months. With full college backing, she and Frank Wicks, a Maine resident and member of the dance community, set about hiring the best teachers they could find. When the lineup was complete, notices were placed in Dance Magazine and other publications.
Reflecting back on the festival's first season in 1983, Ms. Plavin recalls, "we had seventy eager students whose diversity in age equaled their diversity in ability. With five class periods a day for three weeks, plus evening events and gala concerts, the format was set. The teachers that first year were David Gordon (composition), Christine Sarry (ballet), Gary Chryst (jazz), Suzanne Levy Carbonneau (dance history), Monica Morris (former Paul Taylor dancer, modern) and guest artist Jacques d'Amboise. It was an auspicious beginning."
Since 1983, the festival has offered a three-week summer program of dance training for adults. (In 1996 the Young Dancers Workshop was established to meet the demand for high-quality dance training for teens ages 14–18.) Choreographer Gabe Masson who has served on the BDF faculty, attended as a student in 1983. He remembers, "It was my first time out of the South. I came up here and spent three weeks in this place and it was amazing…For some reason it just felt safe."
That feeling of safety, not being pressured, is what many people associate with the atmosphere at Bates. Dr. Suzanne Carbonneau, who returns to the festival year after year to teach, write, and lecture on contemporary dance, has said, "one thing that happens here that doesn't happen at some of the other places is a genuine sharing at all levels of the dance field, a real sense of community… [The Bates Dance Festival] is for me a utopian vision of what an artist's life should be like. It is extraordinary to be in a place where I don't ever feel like there's competition at any level."
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