Several Dancers Core and Emory Dance Program
offer Spring Fieldwork Workshop for Independent Artists

Atlanta—January 4, 2007— Several Dancers Core and the Emory University Dance Program, in conjunction with The Field (New York,) offer local area independent artists the opportunity to grow their work in the Spring 2007 session of Fieldwork. Consisting of 10 weekly sessions, artists of all art forms — visual, music, literary, dance and performance — engage in facilitated performing & viewing of works-in-progress. The Wednesday night sessions, facilitated by storyteller, Ann Ritter, will begin February 21, 2007 and will be held at the Several Dancers Core Studios in Decatur from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.. The ten weeks of workshop sessions will conclude with an open public performance, on April 29, 2007 at 7:00 p.m., showcasing works developed through the feedback process at Emory’s Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. The cost for the ten-week session is $50.

The Fieldwork workshop is a rigorous workshop designed to help artists gather information about their art. Each week artists can show developing work to and receive feedback from their peers in a supportive environment. This open but demanding critical process creates an ongoing forum in which artists examine art, and challenge themselves to become as expressive as possible in whichever discipline they work. Fieldwork discussions use a specific, facilitated feedback structure that gives the artists information about how their work is being perceived. “Viewers act as a blank slate—giving gut reactions to the performance. In this way, the artists quickly learn whether or not their intentions are being communicated.” (Atlanta Press)

The workshop will be facilitated by storyteller and long-time Fielder, Ann Ritter. Ann is a performer, business woman and mother who lives in Decatur. She is a five-semester veteran of Fieldwork and sits on the boards of Beacon Dance Company and Friends of Theatre at Emory. She has performed with Beacon Dance and has developed autobiographical solo pieces. She is currently at work on a performance piece based on the life of Georgia novelist, Flannery O’Connor.

Fieldwork in Atlanta is a part of The Field Forward Network; a program designed to bring The Field (NYC) to cities in the United States and abroad. The Field offers programs that help independent artists create new artwork, manage their careers and develop long-range strategies for sustaining a life in the arts. The idea to expand Field programming to cities outside New York sprung from conversations between Sue Schroeder, artistic director of Several Dancers Core, and Steve Gross, Co-Director of The Field NYC in the early 1990s. As a Field site, Several Dancers Core provides The Field’s programming for artists in our communities. These programs are one of the three core activities of SDC, who besides professional dance performances and community outreach programs, continuously seeks initiatives to enhance the personal and professional experiences of artists in general and dancers in particular. For more information about The Field, go to www.thefield.org. For more information on Fieldwork, please call Several Dancers Core at (404) 373-4154 or please visit us at www.severaldancerscore.org..