Princeton Dance Festival Reimagined—Site, Off-Site, Site-Responsive

Princeton senior Ysabel Ayala rehearses a site-specific work at Henry Moore’s Oval with Points sculpture on the Princeton University campus for Princeton Dance Festival Reimagined. Photo: Jonathan Sweeney/Lewis Center for the Arts

When the pandemic shifted courses online, I created a course in site-based choreography for students to create within their communities. Site, Off-Site, Site-Responsive Dance and Choreography asked where can dance happen? What can it do? And who can do it?  

We examined the differing conventions of site-based art, site-responsive performance practices, and site-specific dance to generate student-led choreography projects. We looked at urban space interventions, itinerant performances, environmental constructions, and immersive site-responsive dance pieces to question how they negotiate the performer and audience relationship, reveal hidden histories, and become agents of activism and protest. We explored walking scores and audio-led improvisations to navigate the body and space and create layered choreographic scores that develop responsive physical vocabularies from the landmarks, parks, and streets discovered. Students researched the communities they live in to discover locations for site-situated and site-responsive choreographic practices.