At this stage of the game, we’ve heard of boat dances (thanks to Riverkeeper), and then there are the ship raves (thanks to MNM Presents), but now David Butler is taking the artistic form of dance on the water to an entirely different level by directing choreographed dance on land and water. David will be taking Mutual Riverfront Park by storm, as the performance is set to be one of the first to utilize this brand new Buffalo River venue. Called Grain Dances Steel Floats, the act will showcase the historic elements of the old First Ward, while at the same time developing dance sequences performed by David’s dance troupe, with original music by David Kane. It’s great to see a performance of this sort coming to Mutual Riverfront Park. From David:
“Grain Dances Steel Floats is ultimately story telling, as well as a collaboration of visual, music dance and theater artists that will glide quickly through periods of Buffalo History. We will be using historic reproductions of boats from the Buffalo Maritime Center as small stages for dance and the sails of larger boats as projection screen. So some performance will be on land and some on the water itself. The show focuses mainly on the early years of the First Ward and the peak of the post Erie Canal days. We are hoping to tell a few these amazing stories in a new and dynamic way. Though the piece will be around an hour long, this is not a traditional theater venue, we are suggesting that people bring their own lawn chairs.”
Photos: Dancers (Nancy Hughes and Andrew Kutnyak) rehearsing on boats this past Saturday at Hoyt lake, on the Buffalo Maritime Center boats. Other shots are screen shots from video created by Seth Tyler Black that will be projected on screens and on the sails of the double masted Scajaquada – the double masted boat provided by the Maritime Center.
Details below: