See “STEPS: in response” at the NCSU Dance Company Concert on April 11 and 12
Join us for the final performance of John Cage’s STEPS: A Composition For A Painting with Ray Kass April 11-12, 2019, in Stewart Theatre at Talley Student Union.
Where it All Began
NC State Dance Program collaborated with Arts NC State, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, and the Crafts Center on Rural Avant-Garde – The Mountain Lake Experience. This exhibition was on display in the Gregg Museum of Art and Design during the fall of 2018.
During that time, Ray Kass, the founder of Mountain Lake Workshop, conducted multiple workshops as part of his residency here at NC State.
Master Class: John Cage’s STEPS – A Composition For A Painting with Ray Kass
We teamed up with Ray Kass for one of these workshops – STEPS: A Composition For A Painting on September 19, 2018.
Last Chance to See the Show
After the workshop, Dance Program director Tara Mullins and Health and Exercise Studies dance faculty member Autumn Mist Belk collaborated on a dance and multimedia piece entitled STEPS: in response, which will premiere at the NCSU Dance Company concert April 11 and 12.
The piece touches on the concepts of the soul human figure in nature, John Cage’s ideas of chance, the pattern of the footsteps in the STEPS painting, and the words of inspiration Kass shared with the students. The work also features a film by Belk.
Currently, the Crafts Center is also displaying Revisiting Mountain Lake, an exhibition of student work, including a STEPS painting, with Ray Kass through April 28, 2019. This has been a very exciting year-long collaboration between three Arts NC State programs!
More About Rural Avant-Garde – The Mountain Lake Experience
Painting with fire, dancing in ink, or exploiting decomposition, artists such as composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, poet/ceramicist M.C. Richards, photographer Sally Mann came to Virginia’s Mountain Lake for a series of art experiments involving scientists, scholars, and local folks. Other participants included visionary Howard Finster; Japanese sculptor Jiro Okura; official New York waste management artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles; East Harlem street artist James De La Vega; Zen scholar Stephen Addiss; and painter Ray Kass. Organized by the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts at Longwood University, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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