Ground Series dance collective

interview+photography JORGE PEREZCHICA

In November of 2019, I was invited to witness  Ground Series, a site-specific dance performance hosted at Buckwheat Space, a 2.5 acre property owned by artists/founders Yvonne Buchanan and Dorene Quinn in Morongo Valley, CA. It was my first such experience, and honestly, I was not sure what to expect — but was pleasantly surprised. Unlike theater, the dancers and action were happening all around the audience in the outdoors. It was experimental, spontaneous, playful and an opportunity to experience the land from various perspectives. Ground Series dance collective include Sarah Ashkin, Brittany Delany, and Shayna Keller. They held a week-long residency at Buckwheat Space preparing for their event, holding workshops and displaying a photo gallery exhibit inside a 20 foot shipping container. Just as the environment stood as a stage for Ground Series, the performance was perfectly timed with the sunset to create an ethereal and unforgettable experience. Afterwards, the audience were invited to enjoy a post-show reception of tacos, drinks and conversation with the dance troupe under the stars.

Hi, Sarah Ashkin, Brittany Delany, and Shayna Keller. Thank you for the invite. Tell us how you met and the origin story behind GROUND SERIES?
Sarah and Brittany, co-directors of GROUND SERIES dance collective, met at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) where they forged a shared background in post-modern dance, critical thinking, and dance making as an ethnographic process. As company members of Pedro Alejandro Dance and Dancers for several years, Ashkin and Delany learned from Alejandro’s multi-faceted, international choreographic research spanning architecture, improvisational forms, dance history, site specific making, environmentalism and healing arts. Inspired by the DIY Queer performance arts community in the San Francisco Bay Area, together they moved to the East Bay and founded GROUND SERIES as a curatorial platform and dance collective out of the Temescal Arts Center (Temescal, Oakland, CA). Ashkin and Delany’s goal in forming GROUND SERIES was to erode the elitism and alienation often surrounding postmodern dance. 

Today GROUND SERIES creates work and events in which dance can be shared as a welcoming experience for creative exchange. As curators, we host participatory salons, resource shares, and interdisciplinary maker labs. As site specific choreographers, we prioritize access by disrupting the exclusionary practices of the proscenium. Throughout our creative process, we program open rehearsals, gather community for workshops and feedback, and begin each performance with the sentiment: “Whatever you feel this performance is about, you are right.” Over the past 8 years, GROUND SERIES has collaborated with upwards of 30 artists, curated, produced, and choreographed over 20 shows, reaching audiences across the US and UK. 

How did Ground Series at Morongo Valley, CA come together? And what was your creative process like during the week-long residency at Buckwheat Space?
Our creative process began prior to arriving on site in Morongo Valley. We initiated our research via email, sharing questions, ideas, and gathering inspiration. Next, we conducted several rehearsals via group video conference call. We focused on key questions:

– How does light revolve around us and how do we revolve around light? 

– How has water shaped the place?

-What are the variations of touch in relationship to the environment and the body? 

Leading up to the event, GROUND SERIES hosted a few movement workshops. Brittany taught a movement workshop at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs, in conjunction with Wyld Womxn programming, and then she presented a site-specific movement workshop at Artist’s Tea, presented by Joshua Tree National Park’s Council for the Arts in Joshua Tree National Park. The week before the residency, Sarah led a movement workshop at CREATE Center for the Arts, as part of Wyld Womxn’s Sisters in Studio program. 

For the week-long residency at Buckwheat Space, we structured our days to include time for warm up, ensemble and solo practice, prop design, and experiments with movement scores, materials, spaces, and sound. A key routine was to process the daily discoveries during the high heat of the afternoon in the artist space, built by prior artist-in-residence Rene Gortat, with additions made by prior artist-in-residence Michelle Castillo. After sharing lunch, we catalogued salient motifs, images, sounds and movement scores by creating small watercolor paintings and writing correlating phrases. We taped these notes on the wall so we could visually track our observations. Some of these snippets appeared in our social media posts to document each day of creative practice. Following the archiving activity, we took time to rest and stretch. The afternoon sessions included time for practicing ensemble work, refining movement scores, and shaping the overall structure of the culminating event. 

One day, after we constructed a prop piece made of transparent plastic balls inside a clear fishing net, we were inspired to do an impromptu photography shoot. Sarah and Shayna jumped into costumes as we quickly chased the afternoon light to set the scene in the wash. Several of our photographs came out beautifully. Our friend and professional photographer Brian Pescador helped prepare and print the photographs, which he installed in the Vilma Exhibition space. It was our first time producing photographs alongside a performance. We were thrilled to share this new element as part of the overall experience. 

In the middle of the week, we took a break from intensive full days of making. Shayna and Sarah had a blast climbing in the Joshua Tree National Park, and Brittany enjoyed some focused visual art studio time, crafting a secondary object and preparing spaces for showtime. Towards the end of the week, we invited Yvonne and Dorene to provide feedback, which helped us reflect on compositional choices and make further edits. In the final days, we coordinated details and logistics for a culminating event, and a post-show reception of tacos for everyone. On Sunday, we helped out with some chores, and de-installed our materials, to prepare the space for the next artist. 

Another key research question emerged during the residency: How does the environment come alive through sound? Using a few shovels from Yvonne and Dorene, Shayna discovered resonant, echoing sound when she carefully struck the shovel instrument atop different rocks across the property. We also used the shovels to scry circles in the ground, adding texture and rhythm to the soundscape. To guide each audience group across the site, we used three different bells—one bell from a prior duet with Brittany and Shayna, one bell from our rental home, and one bell from Yvonne and Dorene. Additionally, we developed a humming tune, inspired by a movement study from Sarah. The simple song was performed at the end of the event, to signal an end to the solos, and an invitation to the audience to join in the harmony. As we collectively departed the wash and arrived back at the beginning of the site, we were greeted with a wide open view of the desert sunset on the horizon. 

For the Ground Series performance in Morongo Valley, what makes Buckwheat Spaces unique?
Yvonne Buchanan and Dorene Quinn are intelligent, curious, multi-talented artists and teachers. They are generous stewards of Buckwheat Space, and we are very grateful to be in connection. The land features a topography with vast horizons, gorgeous vistas, and dynamic environment settings of the Mojave Desert—the mountains, the field, the wash. The shop space and interior spaces also provide opportunities for developing and sharing visual art exhibitions. 

During the performance, there were parts when you danced collectively and other times you wandered off individually. What was happening there?
The design was organic to our process, featuring an ensemble section, a teaching/sharing section, and a section for three solo experiments. For the ensemble section, we worked collectively to refine and shape this piece, building upon motifs, soundscapes, and group audience interaction. For the workshop section, we each guided a group of audience members through an experience in different sites along the wash. For the solo experiments, we selected different sites and materials, and adapted movement scores for each other. 

What do you hope the audience come away with from the Ground Series performance at Buckwheat Space?
GROUND SERIES offered a framework for witnessing site-specific dance during our performance. Unlike the theater, in our offering, dancers and dance action were happening all around the audience. In this way, the audience was a part of the dance, in that they would shape site lines, create pathways, and co-create alongside the performers. They are invited into their 360 degree self. At times dancers would be close; other times they would be far. No witness to a site work has the same experience of the dance. As there were no chairs, they were invited to sit, stand, and move in relation to the dance. As an active witness we encouraged them to be a steward of this event. We asked for them to please make sure that they and others around them could see and be cared for. In addition, we hoped they would experience the land from varying perspectives, and to learn and play with some practices and questions from our research during the residency.  

What’s next for Ground Series?
GROUND SERIES is building tour engagements for its work ‘task’. The duet, choreographed and performed by Sarah and Brittany, reflects on the problematics of the white female body moving through the foreground and background. Balancing the absurdity, tenderness, violence, and honesty required to engage with racism, gender, and western concert dance, ‘task’ is a collage of postmodern dance, performance art, satire, and political commentary. Lastly, GROUND SERIES is available for site-specific commissions, and teaching engagements. 

Is there anything else you would like to add?
Thank you to everyone who came out to experiment with land and dance. We are deeply grateful to our hosts Yvonne Buchanan and Dorene Quinn of Buckwheat Space for holding space for the tender radiance of our residency. Big Thank yous to Gary Ashkin, Joe Devera, Alexander Reza, Michelle Castillo, Brian Pescador, Lauren Bright for their support, labor, and care. We are so grateful to the glistening GROUND SERIES spider web community. It’s no small act of magic to gather in the desert to listen and touch and rest and dance.

web: Ground Series