Students rehearse for ‘BLIND SPOT.’ Courtesy photoNMSA News:
BLIND SPOT will be performed at 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20 in the Santa Fe Railyard Garage, 503 Camino de la Familia, Santa Fe.
The performance, sponsored by the Santa Fe Parking Division, will take place in the lowest level of the parking garage. Audience can access the performance by stairs or elevator across from the Violet Crown Cinema.
As part of the AHA Festival of Progressive Arts, this event is free, ADA-accessible and open to the public.
Performed and created by 27 New Mexico School for the Arts (NMSA) Dance Department students, BLIND SPOT marks NMSA’s fourth annual Inside/Out performance.
Inside/Out is an exciting, community-centered series of site-specific performances staged in Santa Fe’s communal spaces, and connects student artists with our vibrant communities in innovative and public ways.
As part of Inside/Out, NMSA Dance Department has developed a site-specific dance curriculum that prioritizes individual and collective student artistry. Each fall, Directors Adam McKinney (Dance Department chair), Sarah Ashkin and Micaela Gardner (dance department faculty) choose a Santa Fe site that is rich with local and global significance.
Once on location, the students assist in generating questions about the social, environmental and architectural history of the site.
Through Inside/Out, students utilize library research and conduct interviews on the subject of the performance, discovering rich resources in their families and communities. The students then bring their research to rehearsal to practice transforming information into movement vocabulary in collaboration with professional choreographers, musicians, and designers.
Over the past three years:
- Approximately 800 community members have learned more about dance and history by attending Inside/Out’s free site-specific performances in Santa Fe’s parks.
- 15 local professional artists have interfaced with students to create original musical compositions, projection design, and sculptural set elements to accompany student choreography.
- In conjunction with each Inside/Out performance, the choreographic team organizes a service project. In 2013, NMSA donated 922 lbs. of cans to the Santa Fe Food Depot, and in 2014, NMSA dancers gathered 16 bags of trash from the Santa Fe River.
- Inside/Out has successfully garnered the support of local politicians and public service organizations to ensure performances are free and open to public.
This year, NMSA Dance Department is thrilled to embark on our fourth Inside/Out site-specific project entitled BLIND SPOT, located in Santa Fe’s Railyard Parking Garage. Dancers will focus their research on the history of the automobile and its impact on our lives.
BLIND SPOT will feature original music composed by local musician and artist Ehren Kee Natay and performed by NMSA music department students. NMSA Dance Department is pleased to be included in Santa Fe’s dynamic arts community, as part of this year’s AHA Festival for Progressive Arts.
New Mexico School for the Arts provides access to a rigorous mastery arts and academic high school education for youth with passion and aptitude for the arts, leading to post-secondary learning, careers in the arts, and lives that contribute to society.
New Mexico School for the Arts is a public/private partnership comprised of the NMSA-Art Institute, a nonprofit art educational institution, and NMSA-High School, a New Mexico state charter high school. For more information, log on to www.NMSchoolForTheArts.org.
