Quarry Dance VIII

The Dušan Týnek Dance Company returned to the palisades of Halibut Point State Park after gracing six other Cape Ann quarry sites in as many summers, under the sponsorship of the  Windhover Center for the Performing Arts. The dancers gave four riveting presentations based on a vision by Rockport's Ina Hahn, founder of Windhover. Ina's daughter Lisa Hahn has preserved and extended that vision of artistry in movement by the New York dance troupe.

Quarry Dance I
The Dušan Týnek Dance Company
Halibut Point State Park, 2012
Sallee Slagle photo

Quarry Dance VIII, 2019

Choreographer Dušan Týnek  reflected on the origins of the collaboration. "For Ina it was all about celebrating Cape Ann, the natural beauty and especially the quarries and the people that were behind it and made it, that created it, built it with their sweat and tears and blood. She was very much respectful of this place and I think it was her ode to Cape Ann. She talked to me about it for years."

Alexandra Berger, lower left

Alexandra Berger, who performed in both Quarry Dance I and VIII, remarked on the difference between working here and in a theatrical hall.

"On a stage performance there's that striving for perfection, because it's so stark and pristine and structured. Here it's not that way at all. There's a survival aspect to it. There are so many factors we can't count on, like where the sun's going to be in our eyes on any given day, or how breezy it's going to be, or how loud the seagulls, so we can hear each other....



 
....But there's a cohesiveness. It's good for us as a company. It brings us together in a way that a regular performance couldn't." 


Nicole Restani, left

Adds Nicole Restani, "Some of the skill that comes with being a modern dancer is knowing how to toss each other around and support them, but also how to read when something goes unplanned."

 
Dancer Ned Sturgis recognizes that "Dušan's work in general requires quite a bit of trust. It's very athletic and borderline acrobatic. When we get here, it heightens that even more so. We're dangling off cliffs, or dangling each other off cliffs.... 


....Dušan has us do a lot of partnering, so we are used to doing unusual things with each other. It's not totally a shock when we come here and he says, 'Can you go upside down in a tree, and flip over?' We're not surprised when he asks those things of us. We have to figure out how to do them."

 
Says Park Superintendent Mark Peterson, "They did an excellent job. The part of the dance around the tree expressed the lily blooming at this time of year, I thought. Seeing the yellow running down the trails, glimpses of it between the green reflecting the half way point in the summer where things are starting to dry out--I thought the program was very cool."

 

"I hope that the audience is not aware of the difficulty of putting on a performance like this. You want them to appreciate the work that goes into it, but you don't want them feeling sorry for everyone. They just want the joy. They want the end result. The dancers can complain and all that, but during the performance you shouldn't have a sense of that."--Dušan Týnek