Please see a short description of upcoming community workshops being offered by the Olana Partnership below:

FREE Dance Workshop with Site-Specific Dances
Saturday, June 10 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. at the Wagon House Education Center

Join the artistic director of Site-Specific Dances, choreographer Michael Spencer Phillips, for a community-based dance and movement class for participants of all ages and abilities. FREE one hour classes will be offered as part of Site-Specific Dances’ June engagement with The Olana Partnership. Each workshop will bring community members together for an introduction to modern dance and the opportunity to learn choreography for performances at Olana State Historic Site on June 17.

The culminating on-site performance, UNFOLDING OLANA, will take place at Olana on June 17 from 11 a.m.-9 p.m., with a community sunset performance at 8 p.m. UNFOLDING OLANA is designed to offer an opportunity to engage with Olana through movement in the landscape. Join us to learn more about Olana and to experience the joy of collective performance alongside professional dancers.

The performance and workshops are part of Site-Specific Dances’ June creative residency at Olana, made possible through generous support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and in collaboration with The Olana Partnership. To learn more about Site-Specific Dances, visit www.sitespecificdances.com

UNFOLDING OLANA: A Day of Dance
Saturday, June 17 from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. with a sunset performance at 8:15 p.m.

Join us at Olana State Historic Site on Saturday, June 17 for a day of dance, distributed throughout Olana’s 250 acres of artist-designed landscape. Pack a picnic and spend the day exploring pop-up performances across the site or enjoy a summer evening at the sunset finale performance. Site-Specific Dances, led by choreographer Michael Spencer Phillips and architect Dino Kiratzidis, will stage a series of dance pieces throughout Olana’s landscape. These performances are a result of conversations with art historians and developed specifically for Church’s designed landscape, highlighting the artist’s compositions, the site’s contemporary ecology, and the legacy of Olana and its protected viewshed.

Prior to June 17, a series of community dance workshops will be offered on June 10. Participants will be invited to join in the final performance, staged at sunset on June 17 at 8:15pm. Everyone can dance and everyone is invited.

Site-Specific Dances was founded by choreographer Michael Spencer Phillips and architect Dino Kiratzidis to investigate the synthesis of performance and place. Site-Specific Dances connects dance and music to unique places to activate theatricality of the natural world, and explore pressing environmental or social issues in playful or unconventional ways. The creative team for UNFOLDING OLANA includes Darian Donovan Thomas (composer)  and Emma Kazaryan and Nate Reininga (videography).

The workshops and performance are part of Site-Specific Dances’ June creative residency at Olana, made possible through generous support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and in collaboration with The Olana Partnership. To learn more about Site-Specific Dances, visit www.sitespecificdances.com