liminality project presents "make me your manifesto," a new evening-length dance work to be premiered at Lake Daniel Park in Greensboro, NC on Saturday, September 30, 2023, at 5:30pm
liminality project
Caitlyn Schrader is a professional dance artist who presents group dance works under the moniker, liminality project. As a collective, liminality project finds value in projects and practices that are rooted in community, experimentation, horizontal integration of disciplines, and authentic human relationships.
Logo Design: Genna Stott
make me your manifesto, is part resistance, part liberation. It moves from structure to organized chaos, from conformity to abandonment, from self-motivated desires to communal needs, dancers join forces to share in their experience of an ever-shifting state of existence. This shared territory acts as a place of both freedom and rebellion, where individual and group worlds are built. What ultimately results is a communal understanding in service to self for collective survival. As a unit, the simplicity and urgency to turn towards that which one truly loves as what will set one free is recognized. Because we are all in a pursuit of freedom - that alone is our collective act of rebellion.
As you witness this unfolding experience, moments of contemplating one’s own ideas and means of liberation and resistance are encouraged and welcome. I invite you to draft your steadfast ideologies alongside - please, make me your manifesto.
Work Credits
Title: make me your manifesto
Concept and Direction: Caitlyn Schrader (under moniker liminality project)
Choreography: Caitlyn Schrader in conversation with dancers
Performance: Savannah Jenkins, Leondria McRae, Ann Davis Moore, Lillie Persinger, Genna Stott, Aislinn Travis
Costumes: Caitlyn Schrader and Tara Webb
Prop Design: in conversation with Michael Schrader
Prop Construction: Caitlyn Schrader
Sound Board Operator: Anna Clymer
Music:
“KTO WHO” by Kate NV
“Survival” by Fox
“Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company
“Relish” by JEFF the Brotherhood
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron
“Floe (Remix)” by Philip Glass Ensemble
“Darker Than This” by Emile Mosseri
“Reborn” by Colin Stetson
“Mother’s Love” by Vernon Spring
“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” by Nina Simone
Support for make me your manifesto was made possible through the Arts Council of Greater Greensboro/North Carolina Arts Councils’ Artist Support Grant and the North Carolina Dance Festival’s Artist Residency Program
A special thanks to the following people who helped make the evening possible: Taylor Cormier, Kelley Cronin, Marissa Finkelstein, Mary Ellen Schrader, and Michael Schrader. It takes a village.
This is what making a dance looks like
Prop Design + Construction
In my last three creative projects I have incorporated wood/lumber in some way. The root of this recent interest is honestly unknown. What I do know is that I’m drawn to its raw state – the nicks, knots, coloring that make each piece unique; it represents stability, a source of foundation. Beyond this, however, in the words of my dear mentor and friend, Christopher Fleming, I guess my main reason is simply, “because it pleases me.” As such, I will continue to infuse it in my creative practice and products in various ways until I no longer have the desire to. I also have this affinity toward physical labor, which I feel is relevant to mention here. I love manual labor – I feel dropped in when I exert energy, time, and intellectual labor from the smallest of tasks, like lifting or carrying something, to a larger task like constructing something new that didn’t exist before. There is a sense of quiet pleasure, self-satiation, and purpose I find in the act of labor. I might not be super skilled or trained in it from a conventional standpoint, per se. I never took a course or apprenticed in a woodshop, but it doesn’t matter. Im curious. I ask questions. I want to learn. And I have been learning. Like most things in my life, if it feels right, I lean in - I listen. So, right now, I’m leaning in and honoring this fascination with raw wood as integral to my current making practice.
In make me your manifesto, pieces of plywood, a cube structure, a platform, planks, and various beams of different sizes and weight co-construct the living, moving stage material alongside the dancers. This co-existence of body and object creates the landscape that is morphing throughout the work, symbolic of the worlds the dancers are building and/or tearing down individually and collectively. Choices being made based on individual and communal needs of the moment, reflective of their personal manifestos, define the worlds they are creating and sharing with each other during the performance. It symbolizes this notion that what you are witnessing as an audience is not the dancers performing an experience, but rather the dancers having an experience - one that is authentic and true - that is unfolding before your eyes. There is a cyclical pattern of transformation of the performance space through the various ways the dancers manipulate and relate to the wooden objects throughout the work. By the end, what remains are both bodies and objects surrendering to the possibilities of what is imaginable.
Costume Consultation + Design
This is my second costume collaboration with friend and colleague, Tara Webb. Unlike the first process, where Tara served primarily as a costume consultant and advisor, in this process, she worked side-by-side with me from the beginning to end. Together we co-designed the costume tops, which she then made custom for each dancer. Working with Tara continues to teach me that costume choice is another way that I, as a maker, can guide the audience eye in and through the space; it's another layer of the overall design, in conversation with props, environment, and the movement. What has been so thrilling with this work in particular is that I was a part of the process from color palette ideation, to pattern and fabric selection, to color combination and accent decisions, to continued conversations about tweaking details once in the constructions phase as we saw them on dancers, moving through the choreography. An added bonus is I got to do all this with a kind, rad, intelligent, and curious human whom I genuinely enjoy spending time with and dreaming alongside. I imagine this is to be a continued collaborative, creative partnership.
Company Retreat | Community Building
In August 2023, we went on a company (family) retreat to a mountain cabin in Western North Carolina. We rested. Because rest is both a means and act of freedom and rebellion. Because we believe that our relationships are our material with which we make + work and that our personal connections are the art itself. We build our community through dance. We invest time in and with each other. What you see and feel is genuine human connection between people who love and care deeply for one another.
Company Retreat | A Manifesto:
Family meals
Family crafting
Family floating
Family time
Weekly Company Rehearsals | Ritual + Play
The rehearsal process each week is not just for movement invention, experimentation, crafting, editing, and refining. We do all that, we promise, and in between we laugh - a lot. And if we are being frank and transparent, we also cry. But first, and more importantly, we engage in some rituals of arrival that set our foundation as a collective. We always start in a circle with a journal practice. We often will discourse around ideas or materials I bring forth from the "research suitcase," which inform our headspace and approach to the concepts embedded in the work that we next explore with and through the body. These shared, meaningful rituals that we have constructed are means of identity building and is vital for my making process. I've said it before and will say it again - for us, the connections, the relationships ARE the art/ ARE the work (read: as both product + labor). Dance just happens to be "what comes out."
"The Research Suitcase" | Research Beyond the Body
Truth about all of my more recent works, I never start the process with or from movement - if I do, it is very rare. Instead, I find inspiration and curiosity in and around other artistic mediums, more often than not conceptual art or sculpture, or from observations of my life and the things that occupy my brain waves at a particular time and life circumstance. For this work, the seed was planted two years before I even entered the studio to make what has now become, make me your manifesto. It began in 2020 when I wrote a research paper as graduate student on Yvonne Rainer's "No Manifesto." From that moment, a line was drawn in the sand, so to speak, and I set course (both consciously and unconsciously) to craft this work which I now share with you.
Underpinning the new work is a curiosity around the historical, cultural, and social structures and implications of manifestos. Manifestos employ a peculiar duality in form and purpose – at times collective agreements derived from democratic practices as means to instill hope for a new future, at other times rules or boundaries as means to control or hold power to shape mass perception, behavior, and action. Manifestos can also be seen as artifacts or time capsules; identity markers for the people, place, and culture of its author and intended audience – physical statements or declarations that represent an historical or cultural contribution. Their power to enlist zeal, resistance, rebellion, and even freedom make them a complex societal structure. They are like field manuals, guide books to a life of purpose and with meaning.
I continue to converse and collaborate with academic + cultural source material as well, which make up a large portion of the research for this work. If I was to list every single manifesto I read during this process, you would be scrolling for a while. Instead, I've decided to highlight the two main manifestos that had the most influence on how this started and what it eventually become:
It all started with Yvonne Rainer's "No Manifesto" (1965)
It all shifted with Mierle Laderman Ukeles' "Care" Manifesto (1969)
We Didn't Just Make a Dance ...
...or just read manifestos... but we also made our own individual and collective manifestos. In response to Yvonne Rainer's "No Manifesto," we decided to first make a group "Yes" Manifesto that outlined our creative framework, beliefs, and values as a collective around our making process. Our "No" Manifesto ended up being a fun, silly, but genuine representation of the overall daily frustrations we encounter in the human experience that we would simply like to say "no" to.
Personal manifestos written in our journals were often shared with our group at rehearsals, as a means of connection, but we've decided not to share those publicly at this time.
...And We Also Made Collages, and Shared Playlists...
... first, as an entry exercise and as another means to write and consider: "What constitutes a manifesto? What does it look like?," but then as actual components of the final work, as pieces to the larger puzzle. Again, this is reflective of our making process - we aren't "just making dance" - all that we make together is a part of the movement and choreography you are witness to.
The Collaging Didn't Stop There...
I know when something is interesting to me when I begin to take pictures of it in my daily life when I encounter it, or take screenshots of examples I see online. At the moment, when Im "collecting" inspiration, I never really know how or if it will manifest in a particular project or process, but I trust it is bubbling for a reason, whether it becomes overtly apparent in the end or more subtle. This became the case for collage. I had been taking images and screenshoots of collages, zines, prints, and artists books that I came across early on in this process. I wasn't sure why - but I kept doing it. I was clearly drawn to it. It wasn't until our retreat, when we made our individual collages that the gears began to click, and a decision was made to create a collage not just for the poster image, but also as an alternative performance program. For me, collage embodies collaboration - a communal making - taking pieces of things that existed before to make something new. Personally, I find a freedom in making collages, they represent a form of rest for me - something this work has gifted me as a reminder of what I need to do more for my self-sustainability. They also are manifestos in my opinion. It seemed fitting to this work and the way I make dance. So, I leaned in.
Stay Tuned: we hope the sharing of this work is just beginning. Continue to follow along to see where we might be taking "make me your manifesto" next!