Arts Spotlight: Performing Arts Series

Andrea Olsen gives me hope. If you are anything like me, you have also spent countless hours deliberating over various premade professions, wondering which hole fits your peg best, only to be frustrated by incompatibility at every turn. Nothing seems to match that idyllic happiness we have always been told to seek without compromise and yet, people like Olsen embody an independence and creativity that discard social expectations and remold the norm.

Olsen has traveled the globe over the past four decades, teaching, touring and creating nature-based dances that reconnect the body with its environment. This Sunday, Oct. 4, at 2:00 p.m. in the Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCA), Olsen will offer the capstone per- formance of her 33-year career as a professor of dance and environmental studies.

In “Dancing in Wild Places: Seaweed and Ocean Health,” Olsen combines her love for the ocean and her passion for dance to avail our minds to the vast underwater gardens appearing along the wrack-line of beaches. The piece is the result of research conducted at seven different seaweed sites around the world. Olsen traveled to France, Ireland, Iceland, Nova Scotia, Florida and the Florida Keys to gather knowledge about the unique underwater flora that supports count- less life forms and plays a vital role in stabilizing ocean temperatures.

She went a step further and researched the murky history between seaweed and far-ranging products from gunpowder to iodine to cosmetics, tracing the tentacle effects back- and-forth through time and into your life. The 40 minute dance breaks naturally into seven sections correlating to the seven sites, each rich with a web of information, story and movement. Olsen invites you to follow her deep into the heritage of the oldest form of life on the planet, algae, as she combines science, story-telling and evocative movement to raise awareness on one of the most critical pieces of ecosystem sustainability.

Not only has Olsen blazed her own trail, but she is also incredibly celebrated for her work. She has earned numerous grants, in- cluding a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, Whiting Fellowship and an ACLS Contemplative Practice Fellowship. Her work has been presented at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and the Sophia Institute.
Olsen’s performance is one of the first events to kick off the celebration of 50 Years of Environmental Education and Leader-
ship taking place this October. In 1965, the College created the nation’s first Program in Environmental Studies. Fifty years later, the College has risen to the forefront of environmental research and action.

Events ranging from interdisciplinary lectures, film screenings and art installations will celebrate the College’s continued commitment to the environment. From the Organic Farm Open House this weekend to a keynote address entitled “Green Jobs Not Jails: Criminal Justice Ecology” by Van Jones, Founder and President of Dream Corps, the next few weeks will present a remarkable degree of thought from various environmental viewpoints. Check out go/es50 for more information on the dozens of events comprising this semester’s celebration.