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Earthdance Muse

Articles

CONTACT QUARTERLY
Winter/Spring 2007

By CHRISTINE YEE and SPIRIT JOSEPH

Earthdance began in 1986, when a group of dancers and artists in Boston joined together to cultivate a place for creative expression. Purchasing 175 acres of land in the glorious Berkshire hills of WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS, they planted the seeds of community. Today, Earthdance is an internationally recognized presenter of workshops, contact improvisation jams, performances, and community events, drawing thousands of people to the area each year. People cherish Earthdance as a “home,” and our volunteer program draws creative individuals from all over the world who are interested in contributing to community, dance, art, and the running of a vibrant nonprofit organization.

Snapshot: Two ballerinas learn how to put up sheetrock and teach everyone how to say “thank you” and “you're welcome” in Russian and Finnish. “Prometheus” helps the dreadlocked one haul extra mattresses into the now-vacant lofts for the teachers of the Western Mass. Moving Arts Festival. Margit asks if we can bring a feng shui expert in for the building project when Samantha tells her the original front door of the main building is now the laundry room. Spirit has his tent set up for the nights he is too tired to drive home.

Before the summer season even began, Earthdance received a surprise visit from the local fire inspector bearing this news: guests were no longer allowed to sleep in the main building. This was only a month prior to the busiest time of the year, with a schedule of workshops for every weekend of the summer.

This apparent calamity, however—after throwing the staff into a tizzy for 76 hours—became the setup for one of the greatest miracles of community support in Earthdance history. It became apparent that the renovation of Stephen Yoshen's house, originally intended for new staff housing, would have to pick up pace and intensity to become a new guest dormitory that complied with building and fire codes. The estimated cost of this rapid transformation was a daunting $120,000!

Meanwhile, within a week, a tent village was erected in our backyard to accommodate the summer guests. We threw a sheetrock party. All the staff learned how to use a nail gun and, in line with a phenomenon I was once told when I arrived, “Dancers who come to Earthdance become carpenters,” we hammered on.

Within three months of the news, through phone calls, fund-raisers, and a renewed love affair with a place so many dancers from across the globe call home, donations poured through, tallying, by September, $135,185! (While this is an amazing amount to raise, the total cost of the project—buying, renovating, and other costs—is well over $500,000, so the financial pressure is still on.)

Familiar faces, new faces, came with their own hammers and capri pants to share their ideals—and the fashion in which they eat chocolate—in the vortex of the kitchen cutting table.

The seams that hold together the ever-evolving structure of Earthdance are only visible to those that have hung around for a while. Through this present millennium, it has been Samantha Burnell who has stitched and restitched the fabric of staff, volunteers, lawnmowers, and laundry machines to what stands as Earthdance today. The conclusion of this summer marks Samantha's departure as co-director, and in her place, her co-director Spirit Joseph sets upon a solo venture as director, leading us on with the support of new staff member Margit Galanter as our new associate director.

 

DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE
September 4, 1996

Earthdance survives changing vision, changing times

By ALI CROLIUS
Staff Writer

BACK in 1986, a loose-knit group of dance enthusiasts from Boston asked: Is it possible to escape city life, share a house and children, and give themselves over to pursuing art in the bosom of Mother Nature?

They found their answer in a ramshackled farmhouse and 175 acres in Plainfield that became the community called Earthdance. Ten dancers bought it with visions of turning the rundown Property into an "intentional community" and a retreat for dancers and other creative types.

Ten years later, Earthdance is no longer a residential collective. That dream faded away, a casualty of attrition, financial stresses, divorce, and finally, disagreement about what kind of community Earthdance was meant to be.

But the vision of creating a vibrant dance center - a pastoral refuge from a noisy world that can so easily drown out the artist's inner voice - is alive and well. That Earthdance has not disappeared, as did so many "communes" of the last 25 years, is due to the ongoing support of hundreds of people who have been associated with Earthdance over the years, and the determination of the only original member to still live on the property, 40-year old "visionary spearhead" Stephen Yoshen.

To the passerby heading up the gravel incline of Prospect Street, there are few indications that the white farmhouse on the hill is anything special. There is no sign announcing it as an artist's retreat There is no large parkng lot for the sometimes dozens of cars that (to the chagrin of neighbors) spill out onto the road when there is an event at Earthdance.

Such passersby would not guess that on any given weekend there may be a workshop being led by a nationally known figure in the dance world. In the 24-by48-foot cathedral-ceiling dance studio behind the farmhouse, teachers like Deborah Hay of Texas, Andrew de L. Harwood, Zjamal Xanitha, Aileen Crow and other names known to serious dancers are regular visitors to Earthdance, where they are encouraged to take their work to new outer limits.

Nor would they guess that a Wednesday yoga class is held there for Hilltown adults, that an arts camp for local children has taken place for two summers, or that monthly "community sings" bring together people from all over the area.

Nor would they know of the strenuous dance "jams" that take place, sometimes for days on end. (The upcoming New Year's jam runs for five days straight.) These woods and fields have been used for sweat lodges, full-moon rituals and "blind-mute walks," developed to increase tactile awareness through one person being led through the woods with eyes shut by a silent leader.

Behind the screen of trees are two yurts and a number of other outbuildings, a sauna, a springfed quarry and room in the farmhouse to sleep 20 workshop participants. From the road the farmhouse, with its newly-added porch, hardly looks like a place that would attract writers, poets and painters to come for a weekend, a week, for months to recharge their creative batteries.

But increasingly, Earthdance is being used exactly that way.

"This is an environment where people can explore their personal vision of their dreams and projects," said Andrew Gaines, a movement therapist who coordinates dance programs at Earthance. "It's a place where they don't have to think of the everyday logistical details. Instead, they can go into the studio to work or to the woods for a process of reflection."

While there are sylvan retreats for ballet and other disciples of classical dance forms, Earthdance is meant for the experimental and the avant-garde - those highly contemporary forms like Authentic Movement, improvisation and Art for the Dreambody, a technique that draws on Jung's theories to blend the physical and the psychological.

This summer, for instance, Texas-based dancer Deborah Hay - famous for her "no warm-up, no rehearsal" technique of spontaneous movement, taught a three-day workshop called "Performing Statelessness." Upcoming workshops run the gamut from ethereal to pragmatic: a "contact improvisation lab," with Northampton dancer Nancy Stark Smith, will help experienced dancers in this freeform genre stretch their limits. On the practical side, a December seminar by artists' consultant Elise Benum will teach "How to Market Yourself: Creative Self-Promotion for the Artistically Employed."

First the dream
For the l0 who first created Earthdance in the summer of 1986, all of this was just a flicker of the possible. There was no clear idea of what, exactly, the wooded property could become. The original members had been influenced by the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and '70s, and knew how hard it was for such collective arrangements to work. Cohousing, the Scandinavian idea of cooperative living that caught on in the United States in the 1990s, had not emerged. As Victoria Yoshen, a founding member who now lives in Easthampton noted "I always felt we were either behind the times or ahead of our time." But the idea of starting a community dedicated to dance had caught fire in the imaginations of the founders. Penny Schultz of Haydenville, who lived at Earthdance until 1992 and is still on the advisory council, said, "There was no way any of us could predict how Earthdance would grow. We were all willing to be in it for the adventure."

Back to the garden
Stephen Yoshen had ridden a bicycle around the world, lived on a kibbutz in Israel, and was managing the produce department at a food co-op in Boston when he got the idea of starting a community, late in 1985.

He proposed his idea to a group of dancers who met weekly to dance. Contra dancing, and also the highly gymnastic sensual style called contact improvisation, were the glue that held this group together. Of the 50 or so people who showed up to discuss the idea of communal living, 10 were serious about leaving Boston for the country. They included an accountant, an outdoor leadership teacher, a music teacher, an electrician, a teacher of the blind, and others.

Victoria Yoshen, who was married to Stephen at the time, said, "We wanted to be able to live our lives creatively, without being 'caught' in the 9-to-5 routine. We wanted to find another way to live, where we were cooperative with other people and sharing resources."

After only a few months of day trips around New England, they found the Plainfield property, actually five parcels brought together for the sale.

The first look was less than impressive. The house was barely habitable. Miners had lived in the "hobbit holes" upstairs, in small rooms with mattresses. They had been on the land around World War II, mining the quarry for manganese, a lightweight metal used in aircraft. Snow made it difficult to picture what the land was like.

But the group knew instantly that this was "the place," and the next day made an offer. That summer they quit their jobs and moved out over a period of a month or two. The Yoshens arrived with month-old daughter Kiera. Immediately they began rebuilding the house, tearing down the dilapidated parts and adding, within a year, the dance studio.

"We were very arrogant, very full of ourselves," said Schultz, who had left "the perfect job" as a teacher at a Quaker school to join Earthdance. "We needed that kind of hubris to be able to do this."

As an arts community, the group applied for non-profit status with the state. Their legal name - the Earthdance Creative Living Project - reflects the two missions of the place, which were to live creatively with each other as well as artistically, noted Victoria Yoshen. They toyed with an egalitarian lifestyle, with men and women sharing carpentry, cooking and childcare. ("That lasted until about December," noted Schultz.) They led their meetings with a vaguely spiritual feeling (though there was no religious common ground as in many intentional communities). Decisions were made by consensus. They experimented with various ways to share expenses, from a household "kitty" into which everyone would put money, to a set fee. (The latter won out, said Victoria Yoshen, with monthly costs being $450 a person.)

The group also got involved in the Plainfield community, in an effort to establish themselves as contributing residents of their new hometown. Victoria Yoshen was on the Hilltown Resource Management Cooperative, which led early recycling efforts. The extroverted Schultz ran the dump. Milton Hanzel joined the Planning Board. Even though they were technically a nonprofit, they paid taxes because, as Stephen Yoshen said, "We decided early on we lived in this community, we used the roads, and we wanted to support the town."

Plainfield residents had mixed feelings about the "unconventional" lifestyle of the group on Prospect Street, said Board of Health Chairman Jon Lynes. There have periodically been complaints brought before various boards on such issues as parking, septic systems, building use and the number of people who can legally reside in a house - a fact corroborated by Earthdance residents.

But, as Lynes noted, "There have been alternative communities coming and going in the Hilltowns. Some fly, some don't. We hold that community up to the same expectations of compliance as any other residence."

Andrew Gaines said town residents have not been unfriendly as much as bewildered at times about what exactly takes place at Earthdance.

"Initially it was this 'intentional community' that got everyone's hair up - is this a hairy commune?" said Gaines, a 32 year-old Long Island native who has lived at Earthdance for four years. "It was a tittle more earthy and wild at the beginning. The town doesn't know where we've evolved to since then."

Split mission
Earthdance eventually began to run into trouble as it, struggled to define itself.

Almost from the start, dance workshops took place in the large, sunny studio, bringing people from the outside to Earthdance. That was great for bringing new energy - and the scores of people who fell in love with the place and would come back for weekend "work parties" - but it made it difficult to form a stable household.

"It's hard to have an intentional community with a lot of people moving through," said Victoria Yoshen, who left Earthdance when she and Stephen's marriage ended, in the early 1990s. "And it's very hard to raise children with eight other people. It would get chaotic."

Members eventually left for other jobs, or to start families of their own. While others would come and stay for a while there were 18 residents at its peak in 1991 - the transience caused the Earthdance mission to grow hazy, said Stephen Yoshen.

What pushed the project to its limit, though, was the construction of a huge house - some 4,000 square feet - on a back part of the property, in 1991. It was intended both as a place for people to live, but also to be a kind of school building, complete with fire doors and other institutional touches, in case Earthdance became a major dance teaching center.

Though members and volunteers did most of the work themselves, the construction put the community in debt, said Stephen Yoshen. By the time it was finished, there were only six residents left. They sold the large house and all but 68 acres of land to a developer. In 1992, the group voted to disband the intentional community part of Earthdance. Yoshen proposed running it solely as a dance and retreat center.

That is what it has been ever since. Whereas workshops had been held every three months or so, they now became monthly events. It has taken some time, but Earthdance is gaining a reputation as a place where dancers and other artists can find stillness for as long as they like.

This has meant becoming more like a business, said Gaines, something few of the original members would have envisioned. A new administrator, Teresa Smith, has been hired to handle phone calls and mailings. And policies concerning food, fees and other aspects of running a dance center are being developed out as they go, he said.

Yoshen and Gaines, as well as Schultz and the many others who remain involved from near and far, say they believe Earthdance is only going to grow. It continues to draw on a large body of supporters from around the country; some $11,000 was raised in a recent fund-raiser for new construction. Despite the roller-coaster of the years, those who stay involved say it will remain a place where cutting-edge dance can emerge from dancers' imaginations.

"Earthdance is a place where people can really feel free to go out and explore the less known," said Gaines. "Teachers sometimes get in the habit of running workshops and teaching their same stuff." That's not what the spirit of this place is about. It's about climbing out onto an edge and seeing what's out there."

For more information about upcoming workshops, personal retreats or group rentals at Earthdance Workshop and Retreat Center, call 413-634-5678.

© 1996 Daily Hampshire Gazette Reproduced by permission

RESPONSE TO THE GAZETTE ARTICLE

By DEBORAH HULL

Hanging on the wall in my apartment in Asheville, NC is a treasured photograph of "The Farm," my grandparent's home (which you bought from my family) . I grew up in West Cummington and my brother and sisters and I spent some of our happiest childhood times up there with two of the most special people in my life, my grandparents, who had remarkable lives themselves and raised six children there. My 20 first cousins all share memories of happy family get togethers there often during our childhoods.

I had been excited to learn at the time of the sale that your organization had bought the farm because I, too, was in the arts and went on to get an MFA in Theatre from Indiana University, and thought how interesting it was that a group such as yours was going to take over this beautiful property even though it was sad to lose it from the family.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this article on your website this morning:
from one of your articles from the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
"The first look was less than impressive. The house was barely habitable. Miners had lived in the "hobbit holes" upstairs, in small rooms with mattresses. They had been on the land around World War II, mining the quarry for manganese, a lightweight metal used in aircraft. Snow made it difficult to picture what the land was like. "

As for the comment about the hobbits....my grandfather, Anson Betts, was a chemist, metallurgist and inventor. His was the first patented process for lead refining that worked. He was a Yale graduate, and was truly a remarkable, and classy, person from a very prestigious family in Troy, NY. He knew the value of manganese to the country in its war efforts and went there to try to develop that mine.

My family has just learned about your website this weekend. My nephew in California found it. While we are fascinated by what you have done on the property, I could not let our very rich, full lives there be reduced to the description in this article. I have boxes of happy photos and newspaper clippings, etc. kept from all of our lives there.

Deborah Hull
Asheville, NC

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HOEING THE FERTILE SOIL OF DANCE COMMUNITY

By ANDREW GAINES

Growing up in suburban Long Island, my only contact with gardening was my weekly chore of mowing the lawn. So unaccustomed to the way of plants, I was amazed one spring when my father bought a few seedlings, threw them into the daffodil bed, and actually grew some scraggly tomatoes. Six years ago I yanked myself out of NY city and moved up to the country. Weeks after this transition, I learned that the plethora of sumptuous vegetables I ate came from a plot 50 feet from the house. I basked in the wealth and wonder of this feast, and, within the next few years discovered the tremendous amount of planning, hoeing, planting, pruning, weeding, and harvesting that is required to bring us the "fruit of the vine". Next I discovered that this is also the case with Earthdance.

Earthdance: In 1986 a group of dancers from Boston joined together to find a way to more fully integrate this art with their lives. They decided to create a home in the country, live as an "intentional community", and share their art with others. They established Earthdance Creative Living Project, Inc. with the mission of offering programs in creative arts, cooperative lifestyle skills, and environmental education.

Searching the Northeast for a base they found an 1812 farmhouse and some 175 acres of fertile soil in the Berkshire hills on which to build. First storage shed, then dance barn, sauna, big yurt, little yurt. They built, and built…and bred. Marriages were sealed, babies were born, and members gradually began wanting to continue their explorations in smaller, more independent units.

In 1992 members of the "intentional community" voted to disband, but one of them-Stephen Yoshen-proposed turning it into a workshop and retreat center. And so it was reborn, and so it has grown and flourished. At our July 4th Jam this year, 65 people came from different states and countries to meet, dance, and play with one another. One afternoon, a torrential rainstorm unexpectedly hit the property. A horde of bodies bolted outside, stripped off their clothes, and ran, slid, rolled, and bounced on the trampoline with joy and abandonment. Another evening a group of dancers formed teams, made rules, and led and followed one another in the spontaneous choreography of movement games. Friday evening we shared a ritual blessing over an offering of bread and wine.

During the Jam I began to recognize the important role the Earthdance founders had in fomenting this grace and magic: Penny Schultz led a community sing which culminated in a mass of voices belting out an African chant and reaching upward in ecstasy.; Milton Hanzel lived in the instrument corner of the dance barn spurring musical jams with saxophone, penny whistle, piano and drum. And Stephen Yoshen, the "visionary spearhead" of this place, graciously and ceaselessly twirled bodies in circles upon his shoulders. These and many other initial members planted and tended the garden of Earthdance community, and now the fertile garden is readied for further cultivation and growth.

Today people come for scheduled events, including workshops, jams, "laboratories" (a time for group study in particular movement forms), and innovative explorations (i.e. a silent weekend). They come for personal respite and retreat: dancing in the dance barn, sweating in the sauna, bathing in the hot tub, dipping in streams and hiking trails. They rent the facilities for self-produced workshops, weddings, family gatherings, and rituals in the woods. They also come to work. In mid-May 25 people came to participate in our bi-annual Work Weekend. Some weeded, shoveled manure, and seeded the beds in our organic garden. Others operated a wood splitter and chain saws, preparing wood for use in the sauna. Some gathered and carted away 2 ½ tons of accumulated refuse to the local landfill. The following weekend Trisha Brown, members of her company, and others gathered to clear ¾ of an acre for the forthcoming wedding of long-time company member Diane Madden.

People want to work. Manual labor often helps us to feel grounded, connected with the earth. Seeing the correlation between our efforts and the tangible change in the environment helps us to feel our creative power. When artists have tools to employ their vision-such as a hammer, a rake, or a saw-what emerges is often enraptured with artistry and passion. As I write this I look out on the delicate stone walkways lined by flower beds leading to that large, ever expanding organic garden; I feel the spaciousness of this glassed-in sunporch; I imagine the dining room behind me with its hand hewn cabinets and cherry wood floors behind me; and I picture above me the second floor dormitory with its many beds and massage room.

So much of what I see and feel has been touched by the hands of artists in recent years. No sooner is one totally unexpected and phenomenal transformation accomplished, are we on to the next. We recently began to fanaticize about building a 40 foot octagonal addition to our current dance barn. A grand idea, yes. Far out, yes. But when we introduced this concept at the latest Jam, someone spoke up and asked that we pass around a pad for people to pledge an intended monetary contribution. With more than $10,000 of intended donations listed we're considering putting in the foundation this Fall. I have a strong suspicion that I will be dancing in a glorious new dance space in a year or two.

Until last year, Earthdance was operated and administered solely by volunteer labor. People had vocations elsewhere but would take on necessary tasks to keep the center functioning. As our aspirations, and the demand for what we have to offer, increased it became evident that our next step was procuring regular management and oversight. In January of this year I became the first paid, part-time Managing Director. At the outset I struggled with my self-judge that accused me of bastardizing the pure generosity and spirit upon which this place was founded. I knew, however, that concerted effort could only make Earthdance a more healthy and vital place.

And so it has. We're producing more varied events, including a Silent Jam, a workshop in Dance Meditation, and an upcoming Thanksgiving event celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Contact Improvisation. This summer we've hosted a concert with singer/songwriter Andrew Lawrence, and a fundraiser for the Body-Mind CenteringTM Association. Every Monday we host an open dance jam, and monthly we have a Community Sing and potluck dinner. We've set up a website (www.earthdance.net), put out a newsletter (the Earthdance Muse), and formed a network of "contact people" in major cities across the country. And, much desired, the people we serve is becoming more varied. This summer, 40 African-American and Latino inner city boys came up with The Brotherhood from New York city; 20 teenage girls visited with Catholic Big Sisters; and a dozen Mexican youth will be here to create a dance with Sondra Loring.

Plants growing too closely together in the garden must periodically be pruned. As with all growth, consistent choices must be made. This last Jam we had to turn dear friends away because it was filled to capacity. We've had to tell people they couldn't come up for a sorely needed respite because the facilities were fully rented. We've needed to create more structure, putting up more signs and setting more detailed guidelines. Our registration procedures have become more formal to insure that we are compensated for our facilities and services.

As we expand, I am left with many challenging questions. How do we continue to provide people with the sense of a relaxed, flexible home when we need to create more structure? How can we maintain a feeling of trust with the establishment of more formal procedures? How can we maintain a feeling of community as we expand and have more people around who have no personal connection with our history? It is my hope that we can gracefully dance our evolution by bringing attention to these emerging issues, speaking about them, and unceasingly returning to the founding seeds of love and gratitude for this gift of community life.

For more information, call (413) 634-5678, or write us at:, 252 Prospect Street, Plainfield, MA 01070.

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