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Coca-Cola Artist Residencies

Music | Theater | Dance | Interdisciplinary

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Past Interdisciplinary Residencies

Spring 2007

Rebecca Novick, Rebecca Salzer, Andy Tierstein - Interdisciplinary

Emory Creative Writing faculty member Joseph Skibell’s novel Blessing on the Moon received an unconventional adaptation from Rebecca Novick, director, Rebecca Salzer, choreographer, and Andy Tierstein, composer, who used the text as inspiration for a new production involving dance, theater, and music. The adaptation of Blessing on the Moon was completed through a three-week developmental workshop that joined the efforts of the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory and the Dance Program as part of the biennial Brave New Works play laboratory. The company, which included eighteen Emory students and four faculty members, worked with the guest artists for up to twenty hours per week in a collaborative and exploratory process in which company members contributed ideas as the artists tested their theatrical strategies on the group. The workshop culminated with a free public performance in the Schwartz Center Dance Studio. Faced with a very long waiting list, a dress rehearsal was also opened to accommodate the crowd. Ultimately, approximately 200 people were able to partake in this work-in-progress. A talk-back session led by the Atlanta Alliance Theater’s dramaturg, Celise Kahlke, was held after the final showing, with all the guest artists responding to questions from the audience about the musical and choreographic choices and the adaptive process.

The workshop and performance were accompanied by a panel discussion titled “Adapting A Blessing on the Moon” in which the three artists in residence were joined by noted scholar Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. Each panelist shared their personal discoveries of the novel and what they hoped to bring to the adaptation through their own discipline. They also shared selected images from the text that they found most inspirational.

Ms. Salzer attended two sessions of “Actor & Dancers: Text and Movement,” a class developed and led by Janice Akers of the theater department, and Anna Leo from the dance program. In an atmosphere of relaxed exchange, Salzer engaged the students through videos of her work that incorporated text and movement. Novick joined the class for one session, leading the students through a movement warm-up, and then using the class members to try out some ideas for the play. Salzer and Tierstein visited the theater course, “Principles of Design,” in which students worked on set and costume designs for the work. The two artists were able to give the students more insight into their vision of the project and how they approach new works. The set designs created by the students in the class were put on display in the lobby of the performance space for the audience to see. Tierstein also visited an advanced choreography class where he talked about his experiences composing music for dance.

Alejandro Aguilera and Radcliffe Bailey - Visual Arts

Alejandro Aguilera and Radcliffe Bailey first met in 1998 when Bailey saw Aguilera’s work at Atlanta’s Hammonds House. They immediately became friends, and often talked about exploring the commonalities in their work through a joint exhibition. The long-awaited collaboration came to fruition with Alejandro Aguilera and Radcliffe Bailey: Pitching. For the exhibition Bailey created a fantasy baseball league based on his childhood memories and heroes. Every baseball team needs a throng of devoted fans, and Aguilera provided them through an original three-dimensional mixed-media mural. 

Through the residency program, a group of fifteen middle school students from the Youth Art Connection after-school program, a branch of the Boys and Girls Club of Atlanta, visited the Emory Visual Arts Gallery to view the exhibition. Both artists were present to speak to the kids about their exhibition. Aguilera spoke about the influences of Bill Traylor in his work and Radcliffe explained what various elements of his piece were supposed to represent including references to the Black Panthers, cotton production, and how the baseball field compares to a battlefield. The two artists then fielded questions that ranged from how long it took to make each piece, to what materials were used. With some encouragement from their director, the students also contributed their own interpretations of what the art represented.

The Visual Arts Program served a baseball-themed lunch for the students before introducing a group art project that allowed the kids to create their own baseball "dream team." Each child was given a piece of felt (the same material Bailey used in his work) and other supplies to create a tribute to someone they admired or considered a hero, and then all of the pieces were combined to create one giant team flag. The subjects of their tributes were quite diverse, including Jesus, family members, teachers, sports figures, and Martin Luther King Jr. A child did a tribute to both Alejandro and Radcliffe and said that he plans to be an artist when he grows up.

Elizabeth Dewberry - Creative Writing

Elizabeth Dewberry, a nationally known novelist and playwright, is an alumna of the Emory Department of English Ph.D. program where she studied twentieth-century American fiction. Dewberry and Jim Grimsley, director of Emory’s Creative Writing Program, came together for a reading of their latest works preceded by a reception and followed by a booksigning. This reading marked the revival of the Friends of Creative Writing group and the beginning of a new reading series that pairs one of the Emory faculty writers with another writer of significance who has a connection to the Emory community. Audience members were encouraged to sign up for a membership with the Friends of Creative Writing group.

Dewberry read to a crowd of approximately eighty-five students, faculty, staff, and community members from her latest novel, His Lovely Wife, a fictional work which tells the story of Ellen Baxter’s encounters with a mysterious photographer in Paris that make her question all she has compromised by being a lovely wife. Later, Dewberry discussed her motivation for writing the book and how she drew on past experiences to create the story.

Fall 2004

Interface, October 2004

Interface leads the field in creating multi-media performance art in which body, sound, image, and technology converge. Interface explores art forms and ideas as disparate as contemporary jazz and Japanese dance using new instruments or familiar instruments retrofitted with technology. The group was founded in 1995 by professors Dan Trueman from Princeton University and Curtis Bahn from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's (RPI) iEAR studios. Both are talented composers, musicians, and innovators. Dancer, musician, and ethnologist Tomie Hahn, Associate Professor at RPI, completes the trio. 

Interface offered a performance class that was open to the public, taught classes entitled "Music Cultures of the World" and "Electronic Music/Midi Technology," and led a freshman seminar on Creativity and Collaboration.

Spring 2004

The Great Nickelodeon Show, March 2004

“"The Great Nickelodeon Show"”invokes a time when movies were shown with Vaudeville acts, songs, and lecturers. The nickelodeon was the earliest home of the movie and showed the earliest animation and short films lasting between two and fifteen minutes. The Show's archival footage, period songs, vaudeville acts, and live music make it a playful and authentic historical recreation of the early intersection of film, music, and theater.

Volunteers of America (VOA) and Vision, Strength, Access (VSA) Arts of Georgia brought clients to the performance. The VSA Arts clients were inner-city youth participating in a filmmaking program, and this was a unique opportunity for them to see the very beginnings of the film industry.

Alis, April – May 2004

Alis ”is a unique French theater troupe that uses puppets, theater, film, and visual arts to create a dream-like world in which all the arts collide and interlace into beautiful, expressionistic images.

Alis conducted a six-hour workshop for eight Atlanta theater professionals from the Center for Puppetry Arts, Out of Hand Theater, and Theatre du Reve, and presented two public performances of their unique production "pas de 3."