Artists & Communities Host Site: Massachusetts Cultural Council
120 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
E-mail: prais53@aol.com
Web site: www.massculturalcouncil.org

Millennium Artist:
Peter DiMuro
Performance Artist
Washington, DC
E-mail: dimurop@danceexchange.org
Web site: www.danceexchange.org/

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Peter DiMuro's Artists & Communities residency with the Massachusetts Cultural Council Elder Arts Initiative laid the foundations for a legacy of engagement linking elders and young people. Working with the Providence Place Independent Living Retirement Community and Girls, Inc. of Holyoke, DiMuro helped craft a forum for the participants to learn more about each other - discovering their similarities, understanding their differences - and to form lasting connections through creating art together.

The project, titled "Open Box: A Collection of Dance, Story, and Song," also involved a group of local artists - a choreographer, a composer, a writer, and a fellow Liz Lerman Dance Exchange member. Most of the young women from Girls, Inc. shared Puerto Rican ancestry; many of the older women from Providence Place were retired nuns of Caucasian, French, or Polish origin. Both groups have dealt with the consequences of immigration, economic hardship, and violence; both traditionally experience feelings of alienation from their families and communities. Neither had had opportunity to interact with the other, and were thus unfamiliar with their histories, talents, and concerns.

Through the beginning of the year, Peter DiMuro and his collaborating artistic team met with the participants from Providence Place and Girls, Inc. to explore their ideas of home, dreams, self-image, and memories. They then worked together to develop songs, poems, and dances that incorporate and interpret their personal, unique, and shared experiences.

Culminating performances of "Open Box" were presented in May 2000 at Providence Place and at Holyoke's Heritage Park Museum. A highlight of the performance was "The Basketball Dance," which derived from the girls' love of basketball. Movements based on the sport were shared between girls and elders; then the senior women added to the dance, recalling the games they had played as children. The basketball itself later evolved to become the moon in "Moon Song," based on a poem by one of the elder nuns.

The audience at these performances experienced the work in process and in finished form. This was a deliberate decision made by the project partners, reflecting the continuing process of sharing voices in community.

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Peter DiMuro is a choreographer, performer, and educator whose work has been produced in New York's Riverside Church and St. Mark's Danspace. DiMuro is on the faculty at American Dance Festival (1999) and Bates Dance Festival (1997). He is also the Associate Artistic Director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.