In conjunction with the Movement Party, we are reprising A Dance Score for the Downtown Mall for Tom Tom Founders Festival 2014!

Join us as we explore the intricate design and leisurely flow of Charlottesville’s living room, the Downtown Mall, through the medium of dance. Watch as the Charlottesville dance community comes together to highlight the connection to dance and choreography that the design of the Downtown Mall draws from.

The idea of the project was inspired by the work of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. Lawrence Halprin, who designed our Downtown Mall, was an influential American landscape architect, designer, teacher and most notably Anna Halprin’s life long collaborator. As one of the first to use improvised dance scores, Anna Halprin had a profound affect on the trajectory of modern dance. Dance scores are essentially a set of instructions that tell participants what to do while providing space for decisions to be made about how. Together Lawrence and Anna explored the intersection of movement and architectural design, most specifically in public space, and so will we.

A free zine of dance scores for the Downtown Mall will be published through the support of UVa’s Office of the Provost & the Vice Provost for the Arts. Comprised of eight different scores that have been created by community members, the publication will guide readers through the architecture of the Mall in new and unexpected ways. The zine will be available at Telegraph Gallery and in various locations at the University.

On Saturday April 12th from 4:00-5:00pm eight different groups of dancers will present their interpretations of the dance scores. The performance will begin at the stairs of the Transit Center at the East end of the Mall. Each group will offer a different perspective, and reveal the diversity and talents of the Charlottesville dance community.

This project was conceived and organized in 2013 by local dancers, choreographers, and teachers Katie Schetlick, co-director of the Movement Party and lecturer in Dance at Uva, and Veronica Hart, director of concorDance contemporary and co-director of Albemarle Ballet Theatre.