Becket — Members of the community, including first responders from the town’s fire department, medical professionals, and clergy members, all took part in The Common Ground Project on Wednesday, May 24 at Jacob’s Pillow.
The audience for the performance was third and fourth-grade students from Becket Washington Elementary School.
The performance was created by choreographer Dawn Lane back in 2008 as a “metaphor for noticing similarities and accepting differences” in people and their lives. In an interview with The Berkshire Edge, Lane said that the performance was not a dance piece, but rather a “pedestrian movement piece.”
Lane retired in December 2021 from Community Access for the Arts (CATA), where she served as the organization’s artistic director for 28 years. “Through my work at CATA, I’ve always had a fascination with working with people who are not necessarily dancers,” Lane said. “We wanted to give them an opportunity, a safe environment, and a universal structure. We’ve performed ‘Common Ground’ with many different casts over the years. I hope that now that I’m retired, I can look for more casts from all different professions to learn the piece.”
Lane said that, for the Common Ground Project event after the pandemic, she wanted to focus on the professions of first responders, which includes the medical field, firefighting, and clergy. “A lot of these professions have been challenged during the pandemic, but these were the three professions that struck me as being particularly challenged,” Lane said. “We live in a world where, as we grow up, we get educated and get better jobs. We try to live in this vertically built world, and the ‘Common Ground’ piece is an attempt to turn the vertical onto the horizontal in a way to make the world into a place that is more open to everybody. For this performance, you have three different communities coming together to integrate into a community of their own.”
At the beginning of the May 24 event, Lane performed her piece “Contain Her,” which encouraged the audience to, literally, think outside of the box.
The May 24 performance of “Common Ground” included Becket Fire Department members, including retired Fire Chief Mark Hanford, Deputy Fire Chief Kris Massini, Chaplain Jason Maronde, and members Bob Healey and Chris Swindlehurst. The performance also included registered nurse Emily Barry, registered dental hygienist Joanne Simpson, internist Jeff Vieira, First Congregational Church of Sheffield pastor Jill Graham, and retired United Church of Christ minister Barbara Kershner.
According to participants, there was a week of practice and rehearsals before the May 24 performance. “And it was a heck of a lot of fun,” Simpson said. “Dawn is an excellent teacher, and she brings out the best in her cast. It was amazing what she was able to get us to do.”
Lane said that she is thankful that the participants in the performance put their time and energy into it. “As a creative person, going into somebody else’s professional environment and trying to sell them something like this is very hard,” Lane said. “They all volunteered their time and created something that is very magical.”
Lane previously worked with the Becket Washington Elementary School earlier this year for two weeks through the Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion program. “We wanted this event to be a nice kind of finale to their school year after working with them in the classroom,” Lane said.
The Common Ground Project was funded by a grant from Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
