Ghost/Light #1— Mills Dance Concert

Presented by Mills Dance

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Ghost/Light #1 is an improvisational remembrance of the history of dance at Mills College. The work is titled numerically as this will be the first in a series of multiple performance events that will happen over the next year. 

Featuring former faculty and alums, the first in this series will blend spontaneous movement stories, 350 modern dance costumes, arcane technologies and archival materials as it conjures the ghosts of dance from years past. Intentionally improvisational, Ghost/Light celebrates the experimentalism, innovation and rich creativity that was the Dance Department at Mills College.
 
This hour-long co-created work will feature a small cast of highly regarded dance artists including Abby Crain, Erik Lee, Shinichi Iova Koga, Pei-Ling Kao, and Sheldon Smith. Music will be performed live by renown composer and multi-instrumentalist Zeena Parkins. Performances will take place in the Mills College at Northeastern University Digital Performance Theater, upstairs in Lisser Theater. 

In the summer of 2022, Northeastern University officially merged with Mills College. As a result of this process, there was no longer a way forward for this historic department that was home to many significant figures including Marian van Tuyl, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, Deborah Vaughn and many many others. The sudden absence of dance on campus is felt deeply though ongoing efforts are underway to rebuild and renew. There is hope that within a few years, the studios will once again burst with physicality and creativity. And in the meantime, it is important to not only recognize loss but also to respond to it. To not just let it go but to dance about it, to write about it and to dream about it.
 
The Ghost/Light series is being in created in conjunction with the Mills Dance Archival Project to do just that. A multi-year undertaking, the archive project will look at the history and significance of Mills Dance within the Bay Area and around the world. The project will dive deeply into the connections between Mills and its impact on ever expanding notions of how dances could be made, performed, remembered and studied. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to release a book showcasing photos and interviews; a website dedicated to making 80 years of important history as visible and accessible as possible; and an ongoing series of performances that will use the very substance of dance itself to explore past, present and future of dance as a fundamentally human necessity.