From the Field: DanceBARN

From the Field: DanceBARN

COLUMNS SECTION SPONSORED BY BARBETTE

From the Field: DanceBARN Collective. Battle Lake, MN

Molly Johnston

As I sit here writing this, I’m lodged between the two landscapes people imagined when I told them I was moving three hours northwest of the Twin Cities. The lake and the prairie; these landscapes have a way of constantly reminding me of growth, space, and ownership. Yes, I live in a town with less than 1,000 citizens. No, I don’t go hunting or harvest my garden for the winter, or have a goat (though I did promise Deborah that I’d name it Thayer if I ever got one). The honest need to run across the field behind my house is much less “Sound of Music” and more “Braveheart” as I find myself as one of the voices representing what it means to live rurally as a dancing-millennial-citizen-artist*.

Screenshot from Robert Uehlin’s, “Sunset Series” screendance filmed on Sunset Lake in Battle Lake, MN. Dancer: Molly Johnston

I want to stress that this article is not a “look what we can do” type of article made to make you want to move to the prairie. We still don’t make any money. We spend a lot of time convincing people that our community art is not a flash mob. It’s a message “from the field” highlighting some stuff we do to help bridge the (oh so annoying term) “rural/urban divide.”

Let’s go back to the prairie and lakes that make up our landscape. Growth. Space. Ownership.

GROWTH

In 2014 my dance partner, Ayumi Shafer, and I sat in my apartment on Snelling and Charles and planned the first DanceBARN Festival. We also made up the acronym that would become the base of our mission statement when we received our nonprofit status in 2017:

Build community through dance.
Aspire to create challenging and innovative dance.
Reinvent dance as community art.
Nurture creative minds and bodies.

The festival has since grown in many ways, but the roots are still planted in the idea that a dance festival can be all of these things:

  1. Affordable.
  2. A space where we can all learn from each other.
  3. Festival goers can impact the community. The community can impact the festival goers.

In terms of growth, the DanceBARN Festival has turned into a beast. A beautiful, seven-headed-beast, tamed by two women with toddlers. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE the beast! Watching the festival grow from a long weekend event with our dance friends camping in my parents’ backyard, to a week-long festival hosting international artists that is now part of our town’s patchwork quilt has been simply incredible.

Since 2014, we’ve added a residency program with rolling applications, started a partnership with an incredible prohibition era resort called The Hideaway at Xanadu Island, started a youth version of the festival called the DanceBARN Youth Camp, infiltrated city boards, spoken at conferences, attended residencies, started a rural dance collective, and collaborated with many many incredible artists. The thing we’re continually surprised about is that people keep coming back.

DanceBARN festival inside the barn studio.
2018 DanceBARN Festival, Battle Lake, MN

SPACE

This is why. We have so much SPACE! We can get to a road that will have zero cars on it, in a matter of seconds. We can go on a walk and think and think and think and never see a single person. And you know what people from New York City love (said in a hillbilly accent)? SPACE! In all seriousness, we cherish the space around us and truly recognize the importance of the time and space to create. We want to support those artists who are busy and oftentimes have limited finances. We try to capitalize on the spaces we have here in our community to help serve these creatives. And what do we want in return? We ask that they use our community spaces, bring their art to the community, and most importantly, make a connection with the people that live here. An awesome example of this community based barter is the first residency we hosted in 2018 with NYC based dance theatre company, Current Harbor. The choreographer and director duo, Annalisa Ledson and Jamie Watkins, brought light to a controversial dispute in the community over the fate of the Kirkbride, an abandoned state mental institute in Fergus Falls. Current Harbor collaborated with us and a local videographer, Kristofor Gieske, to create a screendance filmed on the grounds of the Kirkbride. Community members were invited to be involved in their process by dancing in part of their screendance, as well as introducing the New Yorkers to some delicious hotdish during a community potluck. Current Harbor lead conversations about memories surrounding the Kirkbride campus and interviewed people who felt a strong connection to the massive structure. The film has been part of an exhibit at the Otter Tail County Museum, is periodically broadcast on our local PBS station, and a special screening was held in Brooklyn over the winter. We continue to support projects with both visiting artists and artists living in our rural community. With each project we are reminded that the way we inhabit our spaces can help form the future for how artists (and people in general) interact in and with rural places.

DanceBARN community outside a historic building.
Chase the Flying Hours” - Screendance project collaboration with DanceBARN, Current Harbor, and Kristofor Gieske filmed on the Kirkbride grounds in Fergus Falls, MN

OWNERSHIP

DanceBARN recently co-hosted the Rad Women Ruralwide Retreat with Springboard for the Arts and the Department of Public Transformation, on the same weekend when all of southern Minnesota was closed. Five of the eighteen women were stranded in Battle Lake an extra night because the roads to their rural towns were buried in snow. We were gathered around talking about the complexities of ownership in our communities. Whether it be families negotiating selling the farm that goes back generations, navigating main street redevelopment, or grappling with the fact that all of this prairie is stolen Dakota land. DanceBARN has been interacting with our local community by inserting our creative practices within the redevelopment of underused spaces in our town. We are currently working with 3 choreographer/cinematographer duos to create screendance films in locations around the community whose “fate” is being decided. Similar screendance projects have been used in meetings with our City Council and potential developers to highlight the spaces in an artful way. “Owning” the spaces we inhabit is not necessarily connected to having a deed, but more about feeling a sense of home in the spaces we do our work. Giving our guest artists that same feeling in a short amount of time is high on our goal list.

Dancer in front of brick store fronts.
Screenshot from “Hatchery Row” - Screendance collaboration with Robert Uehlin and DanceBARN highlighting a street in need of development. Dancer: Ayumi Shafer

As I finish writing this, I look north to the frozen lake and south to the snow covered prairie. Watching spring approach, I feel reflective about the work DanceBARN is doing to share the beauty and potential of this space I call home. The forward-thinking attitude that spring brings also inspires me to invite anyone to reach out. If something sparks you to share your creative work or to become influenced by the power of a rural community, reach out to those who are already fostering these ideas like us.

* Citizen Artist is a term borrowed from Mary Welcome. Mary is a collaborator, friend, and rural confidant. She defines it best herself, “The role of the citizen artist is to discern, nurture, cultivate, and encourage the existing culture of a place.” www.bangbangboomerang.com

Molly Johnston is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, screendancer, and co-founder of DanceBARN Collective. Her roots lie in Minnesota, but dance has taken her from the land of 10,000 lakes to Philadelphia, PA (BFA, University of the Arts), Eugene, OR (MFA, University of Oregon) and back to Minnesota where she worked as Zenon Dance Company and School’s school coordinator before moving to rural Minnesota to pursue her passion for creating dance in rural communities. Since making the big move to small town Minnesota, Molly has cohosted the annual DanceBARN Festival and curated many other events, classes, and workshops in the region. Molly resides on Silver Lake in Battle Lake, MN with her husband and son and is excited about continuing the collective effort of bringing professionally charged dance makers to the community she loves.

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