ABOUT THE FIELD CENTER
Our Mission
Located in southern Vermont, the Field Center is an educational center for arts practices that serves as a resource for working artists at all stages of their career to focus on their work, develop their teaching and performance practices and build stronger collaborative relationships with one another. Through working together we help to create and curate structures, solutions and events that inspire equitable, environmentally and socially sustainable practices, interrogate systems, drive creativity and encourage courageous exploration.
We work towards cultivating the arts ecology in the United States while bridging gaps between differing ages, human identities, and borders between people and practices in both the local, national and international communities. We work to create a place that appreciates difference and is rigorous, improvisational, intuitive, healthy and original.
What exactly do we do?
The primary aim of our programs is to provide an alternative and supplemental avenue to academic models in performance, dance and interdisciplinary arts education.
For many working artists or for those interested in learning opportunities in the arts, going to college is the only option outside of one-off 2 hour classes at local studios.
We strive to cultivate accessible and open long-form programs that reduce competition within the arts and exist
as a counterpoint to application-based programs.
As an ‘incubator’ space we offer time for artists of all identities, time to experiment, connect and train with one another. What we offer at the Field Center:
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A ‘hub’ for contemporary dance and performance artists in Vermont and New England
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Year round residential master classes and long form workshop opportunities that are open to all.
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Affordable, accessible pricing opportunities for particpants, and innovative teaching opportunities for emerging and established teachers in the fields of dance, performance and the somatic arts.
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A dedicated year-round scholarship program that keeps our programs diverse and inclusive and a commitment to diversity within our faculty.
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Invitiation based residencies for artists in the field, centering process over product and dedicated studio time to develop new works.
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Publicly accessible showings and performances featuring emerging and established artists.
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'Summits' or symposiums of people within the performing arts fields to gather and discuss aspects of their work and practices as a means of fostering community. These have included gatherings for Vermont-based dance artists, Indigenous-centered gatherings, panels of scholars and academics within the field, and conferences for dance artists with disabilities.
TEAM
Is a visual artist, dance-improvisor and dance-arts curator primarily interested in ideas of wilderness, multiplicity, emergent structure and futurity. He has been focused exclusively on programming and curating dance since 2014 with a focus on experimental performance and somatic dance practices.
He was the co-founder, director and lead curator for Lion’s Jaw Festival, a boston-based annual performance and dance festival, housed at both Green Street Studios and MIT, that ran from 2016-2020.
Jared is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts-unceded territory of the Nonantum and Massachusett. He is a father and a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design.
Is a painter, interdisciplinary artist and teacher. On staff intermittently since the Field Center began, Anya has been instrumental in initiating and developing many of the house systems and structures still in use today. Anya helped develop and currently manages our Long Term Work Exchange Program.
Anya also painted the mural that sits above the dining room and conceptualized and developed the Field Center logo.
Is a professional dancer and movement artist, a Certified Rolfer and practicing manual therapist, a graduated student and contramestra of Capoeira, and a Certified Teacher of the Axis Syllabus.
She carries over 25 years of research and practice in therapeutic, martial, and performing arts, music, yoga, western somatics, contact improvisation, experiential anatomy, functional biomechanics, and more. She is also a mother of two.
Currently based in both Vermont and the San Francisco Bay Area, Nuria teaches and performs internationally and works locally with clients and students.
Is a dancer and chef, currently invested in Contact Improvisation and Collective Improvisation. She is committed to improvisation as a physical practice of asking questions, paying attention, patience and peace. She is curious about the disruption of normative culture through dancing and gathering. She values the interplay of rigor, rest, discipline and play. She teaches and shares her practices nationally and internationally, along with coordinating and producing the CI events at the Field Center.
She is currently the head chef and Kitchen Manager at The Field Center. Her food is inspired by a plethora of cooks, books, recipes, artists, experiences and memories. For more on Lily’s cooking and dance practices, visit her website here.
Is a queer multimedia artist and performer, born and raised within Canarsie and Munsee Lenape lands. They have had the privilege of calling many lands their home, and they remain critically+somatically inquisitive about what it means to occupy stolen land. Cariño’s practice is tuned through improvisation with a focus on Contact Improvisation, chronic pleasure, connecting to the more-than-human world, and the dance of self-preservation.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Jared Williams is a visual artist, dance-improvisor and dance-arts curator primarily interested in ideas of wilderness, multiplicity, emergent structure and futurity. He has been focused exclusively on programming and curating dance since 2014 with a focus on experimental performance and somatic dance practices. He was the co-founder, director and lead curator for Lion’s Jaw Festival, a Boston-based annual performance and dance festival, housed at both Green Street Studios and MIT, that ran from 2016-2020 and is a board member of The School for Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton Massachusetts.
In 2021 he co-founded The Field Center in southern Vermont where he acts as lead curator and Executive Director.
Jared was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts -unceded territory of the Nonantum and Massachusett. He is a father and a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design.
Kevin O’Connor is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a choreographer, performer, improviser, circus and installation artist. Born in London, Ontario, Kevin has been participating for over a decade in a small decolonial, participatory performance art collective that works in polluted watersheds in Ontario. He has worked with NAKA Dance in Oakland, Shakiri and Skywatchers in San Francisco, the feminist collective Oncogrrrls in Spain and collaborated with designer and Inuit hunter Paulette Metuq on a project in Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic. For over ten years, he has followed the teachings of the Axis Syllabus community and is a practitioner of biodynamic craniosacral therapy. He holds a master's degree in choreography and is currently completing a doctorate in performance studies at the University of California, Davis. Kevin's research examines the autonomy, performance capacities of the body and interventions and imaginations in relation to scientific studies, including the biocultural material called fascia.
Michael Bodel is an interdisciplinary dance artist, performer, scholar and arts administrator living in Westminster, Vermont. Currently working as Director of External Affairs at the Hopkins Art Center at Dartmouth College, where he manages marketing and communications. Through his work in communications, marketing and design, he has championed multiple organizations including The Putney School, HERE, St. Ann's Warehouse, Dance Studies Association and other small-but-punchy performing arts orgs. He holds a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Dance from Hollins University/American Dance Festival.
Nuria Latifa Bowart is a professional dancer and movement artist; a student, practitioner, and teacher of Capoeira with the rank of Mestra; a practicing manual therapist and Certified Rolfer®; a movement educator authorized as a Teacher and Certifier within the Axis Syllabus© international research community; and a mother of two. Nuria holds over 25 years of vocational research and practice across multiple therapeutic, martial, and artistic disciplines rooted in the expressive, relational, and healing capacities of the human body. She is deeply engaged with traditional forms of yoga, Western somatics, choreographic and improvisational movement arts, functional anatomy research, and more.
She is co-founder of the Field Center in southern Vermont, a residency and pedagogical center for contemporary heterodox arts practices where she currently lives, works, and manages the garden. Nuria teaches across the US and internationally.
Thomas F. DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology; the group explores emerging technology in live performance applications. He believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming.
He is currently Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and has been on faculty at Duke, Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU and University of Nice. Creative projects include Queer Theory! An Academic Travesty commissioned by the Theater Offensive of Boston and the Flynn Center for the Arts; fastDANCEpast, created for the Detroit Institute for the Arts; reVERSE-gesture-reVIEWcommissioned by the Nasher Museum in response to the work of Kara Walker, January, 2017.
His books include Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance (with Kathy Perkins, Sandra Richards, and Renee Alexander Craft, 2018), Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion (with Philipa Rothfield, 2016), Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings (with Anita Gonzalez, 2014), Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002), and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (2004).
He currently convenes the Black Performance Theory working group as well as the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, a growing consortium of 325 researchers committed to exploring Black dance practices in writing and has acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture.
Land Acknowledgment
The Field Center is located in what is now known as the Town of Rockingham, Vermont near the village of Bellows Falls/Kchi Pôntegok (Great Falls) about 30 miles upriver from Brattleboro/Wantastegok (At the River Where Something Is Lost).
It is home to 50 acres of forest rising up from the banks of the Williams River and is used by bobcat, coyote, bear, moose, frog, deer, rabbit, fox, turkey, porcupine, hawk, eagle, weasel, owl, beaver, opossum, skunk and vast communities of non-human beings.
We acknowledge that these are also the traditional and ongoing homelands of the Algonquian-speaking Abenaki [a-BEN-aki], one of the five nations in the Wabanaki (Dawnland) Confederacy. The Abenaki and their ancestors have lived and thrived as part of this land, and throughout what is known today as northern New England and southern Quebec, for twelve thousand years before their land was stolen, facing genocide through waves of Euro-American and Canadian colonization (which continues).
The present day political constructs on this land were built through and inside of that experience and by those superimposed forces, including processes of legal recognition or erasure.
As a result of these long-contested processes, today this area is home to the Elnu Abenaki, one of four Vermont State-recognized Bands (2011). Note that not all Native communities and individuals are affiliated with a recognized or organized band.
Elnu Abenaki Tribal Website | southeastern Vermont
Nulhegan Abenaki Tribal Website | northeastern Vermont
Missisquoi Abenaki Tribal Website | northwestern Vermont
Koasek Abenaki Tribe | east central Vermont
We encourage you to connect with these people! The Abenaki are very much alive and active in the area and we invite you to learn more about them and their realities.
This acknowledgement was co-written and approved by Rich Holschuh, Chairman for the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs
We also strongly encourage you to seek out and connect with Indigenous communities around you as a practice - regardless of where you live - to learn about them and to listen to and support them. Engaging with, amplifying, and prioritizing voices from Indigenous and First Nations people is an essential part of the ongoing reconciliation and healing work that is necessary in these Lands.
HERE IS A MAP to help you find and acknowledge the tribes in your area NOTE: please contact local nations to verify
We resolve to learn and honor the true histories and realities of the spaces and places in which we live and work, and to integrate these truths into our own perspectives - no matter how painful - and to acknowledge our complicity and our power in making positive change through our decisions. We are currently in the process of constructing a permanent, physical land acknowledgement at the Field Center.
ORIGINS
In February of 2021, motivated in part by the pandemic and its impact on the arts ecology, long-time colleagues Nuria Bowart and Jared Williams purchased a vacant country Inn in Rockingham, Vermont [unceded abenaki territory].
Built in the mid-90's as the 'Madrigal Inn' the large timber frame building was later known as the Inn at Cranberry Farm and later as the Yagna Inn, before it was vacated - standing empty for several years.
Sitting on over 48 acres of forest and pasture, the property currently consists of a 10k square foot main building able to house up to 25 people, a smaller building built to house up to 3 staff members, as well as a small pond and substantial river frontage. Both professional artists, Jared and Nuria had both been separately imagining spaces where performance and dance artists could be supported in both their studio practices and their teaching, while living sustainably and cooperatively with the land. After several lengthy discussions, they decided to join forces to build something with one another.
Throughout the summer of 2021 an instrumental group of volunteers gathered here and helped us renovate the space and lay grounds for the future programming to come. We are eternally grateful to our dedicated summer 2021 staff of Sydney Lemelin, Anya Smolnikova, Lindell Dixon, Rachel Saudek, Simon Thomas-Train, Michael JMK, Justis Hatch, Lindsey Jennings, and Liesje Smith for all their love and labor at such a crucial time.
Jared and Nuria were joined by several people in the first 24 months of the project that were vital to the survival and development of the Field Center. These founding staff built the systems and structures still in use today and are as much a part of the foundation of this project as anyone. They are:
Sydney Lemelin [March - December of 2021]
Sydney joined as an ‘assistant’ in February of 2021 just after the property had been purchased. She worked on-site throughout the spring and summer of 2021 to clean and renovate the building and grounds and co-manage the summer volunteer programs. In the process she built our foundational registration structures/welcome packets/liability forms and played a huge role in the physical design of the space. Sydney also built the first website and helped steward our initial ‘Feasibility Study', developing marketing and budget tools for us that we still use today.
From administration to event facilitation to hands-on labor, Sydney's energy, ideas and vitality were a huge part the beginnings of the project.
Anya Smolnikova [June 2021 - Present]
Involved with the project from idea to present, Anya took part in many of the early conceptual discussions and the Field Center logo was developed from her drawings and ideas.
She co-managed the 2021 volunteer sessions, painted the mural in our dining room, and developed the vast majority of the systems and structures we still use to orient and manage life in the ‘main building’ .
She also helped create many of fundamental systems we use to keep the spaces clean and organized. In the fall of 2022, Anya took on development of the Long Term Work Exchange Program, which she continues to direct today.
Rachel Anne Saudek [April 2021 - October 2021]
Rachel designed and implemented the development of the garden along with Nuria.
Living on-site for the bulk of 2021, they broke ground on the initial garden plot, helped coordinate the building of the raised beds and trellises, co-stewarded the crop-plans and food needs for the first year and implemented Nuria’s designs as a consultant and collaborator - helping to plant and cultivate many of the fruit trees, berry patches and garden structures that feed us to this day.
Graham ‘Teddy’ Olmstead [October 2021 - May 2022]
Joining us in October of our first year, ‘Teddy’ worked as a carpenter and maintenance person doing repairs and renovations throughout the main building and grounds. Among other things, Teddy renovated the entire basement, completing our lower studios and bringing the building to code. He built our Greenhouse and our campers lean-to and our outdoor shower among many other projects. His work can be felt throughout the property and we could not have done much of what we have without his labor.
Lilianna Kane [November 2021 - Present]
Lily began as a chef for our first ‘official’ program in November of 2021 and later joined us on-site as full time staff in the spring of 2022. Creating the ‘culture’ of the kitchen and working closely with Nuria to develop menus and meal-plans that synchronized with our crops and harvest times, she has been the driving force in creating relationships with local vendors and farmers.
She also developed, and still manages, the Work Trade Program and developed the schedules and systems we use to prep, cook, and organize our kitchen both during events and between.
FACILITIES
The Field Center hosts a range of facilities to support research, teaching, community and rest.
STUDIOS
The 'Sky Room'
The 'Sky Room' boasts 40 feet tall ceilings and is surrounded by windows.
The hand-sanded hardwood floor stretches 24' x 24'. Bluetooth Sound System.
*This studio is fully wheelchair accessible.
The 'Lo-Jo'
The 'lo-jo' is a more private space with a lower ceiling and includes a piano.
The hand-sanded hardwood floor stretches 24' x 23'. Bluetooth Sound System.
*This studio is fully wheelchair accessible.
AUDIO/VIDEO LAB
Our A/V lab allows residents and participants at the Field Center to engage with basic video and sound editing as well as audio recording or experimentation. In addition to two Mac desktops fully loaded with Adobe Suite and Ableton we also have a variety of mixers, keyboards and drum machines and traditional analog instruments. Projectors, tripods and green screens are also available. Rentals of our A/V Lab are possible.
*This room is not currently fully wheelchair accessible. Please reach out for details.
MIXED MEDIA ROOM
Our mixed media room is a flex studio for projects and events that might be messier or based in wet media. Supplies include slop sink and refrigerator, sewing machines, silkscreen supplies as well as a variety of wet and dry media supplies. This room currently hosts our weekly figure drawing classes. *This room is not currently fully wheelchair accessible. Please reach out for details.
THE CLUBHOUSE
The clubhouse functions as space to rest and converse. With an extensive and growing collection of dvds/vhs of all genres including experimental, documentary, conventional films as well as hdmi/input capabilities on the television, this can act as both a screening room for people sharing film-based work or giving artist-talks or simply a place for group movie-watching. The clubhouse also includes craft supplies, puzzles and games and an additional shower and bathroom for guests
LIBRARY
Our library is a center for academic research and boasts a robust selection of academic and non-fiction titles on topics ranging from dance and performance to race and gender studies to biology and anatomy. We have a complete collection of Contact Quarterly and independent zines as well as fiction and fantasy.
Our library is also home to a small but strong collection of record albums and cd's for use by residents.
KITCHEN + DINING ROOM
Our fully commercial kitchen is built to feed up to 50 people and includes two ovens, a griddle, a six burner range as well as commercial grade reach-in refrigerator and 3 sinks. Our dining rooms seats up to 35 people and includes a volunteer fridge and a coffee/tea station.
*Our dining room is fully wheelchair accessible.
BEDROOMS
The Field Center is built to sleep up to 30 people. Our bedrooms are largely group rooms, either triples or bunk rooms.
Each room includes a dedicated bathroom and closet. 5 of these rooms are wheelchair accessible.
During the warmer months our capacity increases as we are able to house additional people in our large campground.
SAUNA
Our small wood-fired Sauna is functional year round and available to all program participants!
It fits between 4 and 6 comfortably.
*The sauna is not currently wheelchair accessible
OUTDOOR SHOWER
Our outdoor shower allows campers and participants in our spring/summer/fall programs to relax beneath the sun and stars with views of the garden and mountain!