Elaine Summers, legendary choreographer/dancer/filmmaker, MA, Fulbright Scholar, CAVS, was an original member of New York's Judson Dance Theatre. A 1947 graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and a former MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies Fellow, she is founder of the Xperimental Intermedia Foundation (1968) in New York City. Ms Summers, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, is recognized as a multimedia artist combining dance with all art forms, including film and video. She pioneered the first total intermedia concert integrating multiple film images, sculpture, and music at the Judson Dance Theatre in NYC (1964) with "Fantastic Gardens". She is inventor and teacher of Kinetic Awareness™, a sensory-based movement re-training modality. Her works have been reviewed in Dance, Harpers Bazaar, MS Magazine, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Medion (The Museum of the Media) and numerous other journals and newspapers.
"Crow's Nest/Solitary Geography", an intermedia performance installation was originally created in 1979 for the GuggenheimMuseum (New York) by legendary Judson Dance Theatre choreographer/filmmaker Elaine Summers. "Crows Nest/Solitary Geography" synthesizes landscape film images with improvisational choreography involving the audience in a discovery of the body's geography and its relation to the natural geography of landscape. The performers interact with and within the geographic spaces created by projected images of rural landscapes filmed around the United States. This project has been re-invented multiple times by a diverse cast of dancers, musicians and sculptors including Min Tanaka, Suzushi Hanayagi (dancers); Pauline Oliveros, Jon Gibson (composers); and Pepon Osorio (sculptor). Orchestrated by Kinodance Company in collaboration with Ms. Summers, the Boston re-creation premiered on May 1st, 2005, and featured a shifting line-up of local musicians and dancers including Alissa Cardone, Ingrid Schatz, DeAnna Pellecchia, Debra Bluth, Deborah Butler, Liz Ronka and Laura Quattrocchi. Original sound compositions accompanied, conducted by United States of Belt. CLICK HEREto view an excerpt of the Boston premiere of "Crow's Nest/Solitary Geography"
