Alison Chase Performance & Apogee Arts - Choreographer

Performance Review: Quarryography

• Independence: Alison Chase

By Amanda Smith - Fall 2006 - Published in Dance Magazine

Alison Chase seems artistically unimpeded by her forced departure from Pilobolus at the end of last year. She's spent the time thinking big. Her new work, seen in mid-August, was set in the Settlement Granite Quarry, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on Deer Isle, ME. It used 36 performers, including 8 dancers from Southern Methodist University, a steel band (music by composer Nigel Chase, her nephew), and Mia Kanazawa's 25-foot puppet made of cable. Cableman, as he's called, begins as a heap and eventually achieves verticality through the help of an excavator operator. Cableman's dancing partner was Pilobolus alum Matt Kent.

Quarryography was a co-commission by Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House and the Island Heritage Trust, which owns the quarry. Chase, whose dance classes at Dartmouth inspired the creation of Pilobolus 35 years ago, considers this a sketch for next year's even larger event on the site.

“It's so nice to be out of that manipulative [atmosphere]," she says of Pilobolus. "It's such a treat to have artistic freedom to experiment on a different kind of canvas and be encouraged.”

Chase sees her work now as a new beginning. "It feels like I can spread my wings again."

Reprinted with permission.