I co-choreographed ‘Concrete Connection’, a site responsive movement piece, with the nine students in a class that I designed and taught at School of Art + Design at Portland State University called Movement as Art & Research Practice. Taking place at 11am, the piece created a magical, meaningful, grounded moment in public the midst of a Monday morning near the end of fall term. The students selected the sky bridge as the site, and gave their full participation, hearts, and bodies to the piece. The process began by researching the site, the questions we had, the shapes that made sense. Each student created a movement or series or movements, and we all strung them together consecutively in the piece collaboratively. The bridge to the sky lifted us and held us literally, we connected with the many bridges in Portland, bridges as intersections, as transitions, as water meeting air, as bolsters for connection.

As Ana Halperin said, “I imagine a future where many of us will call ourselves dancers and collaborate to make an art which concerns itself with primary areas of life…For me peace is a communal process, a collective vision”

Photos: Gilian Rappaport

Special thanks to Kye Grant and Hilary Rappaport