Dancer performing ice
On July 18th, at the Kennicott Recreation Hall in the Wrangell Mountains, Alaska, dancers Alexandra Williamson and Bessie Fisher performed a series of original choreographed modern dance works. Dialogue with glaciers, ice fields and mining history in the 13.2 million acre park.
A jungle plane view of the Kennicott Valley. Visible from left to right: Blackburn, Rim, and Atena above the Kennecott Glacier; Donohue, a Nunatak; Stepped Icefall and Root Glacier. Courtesy of Jeremy Pataky.
Williamson and Fisher met as artists at McCarthy in the heart of the Wrangell Mountains in Alaska this summer.lie in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest national park in the United States, Wrangell Mountain Center provides Wrangell experience services for students, writers, artists, scientists, travelers and local residents. In the case of Williamson and Fisher, the Wrangell Mountain Center saw a unique opportunity for collaboration. They chose to host two artists at the same time.
Through cooperation, the dancers completed an ambitious concert-length program in less than two weeks.
From left to right: musicians Chris Ranney and Caitlin Warbelow, dancers Alexandra Williamson and Betsy Fisher, poet Jeremy Pataky and musician Ernie Provencher bow after Betsy and Alex perform at the Kennecott Recreation Hall below Kennecott Glacier . Provided by Todd Paris.
Accompanied by bassist Ernie Provencher (Fisher’s spouse), Fisher arranged and performed a solo called “Melt Down” inspired by the glacier outside Rec Hall. “I hiked on the Root Glacier and Kennecott Glacier,” Fisher said, “and marveled at the speed and quantity of glacier movement, the magnificence of the glacier, and the combination of strength and fragility.” The shape and texture allowed Fisher to feel the power of the glacier, as well as its intricate sophistication.
Williamson choreographed and performed a solo called “Hancock Jig”. Music composed and performed by New York musicians Caitlin Warbelow and Chris Ranney, Williamson created a mix of Irish step dance and modern dance to represent the Hancock jig on display in the Old Kennicott Mill Building Mechanical power. Together, these solo works by Williamson and Fisher put the two main elements of the Wrangell family—humans and geology—in a visual dialogue.
This dialogue is reflected in the dancer’s duet “Dissolution Zone”, in which Provencher improvised the jazz soundscape on the electric bass. “Ablation Zone” borrowed its title and theme from the collection of poems by Jeremy Pataky, a local poet in McCarthy, winter (University of Alaska Press, 2015). Fisher said that they “jumped into Jeremy’s poems, trying to capture the emotions in motion.” They choreographed their way through thoughts.
Artist-in-residence at Wrangell Mountain Center. Dancer Bessie Fisher and Alexandra Williamson collaborated on the choreography of the poetry “Dissolution Zone” in Jeremy Pataky’s “Over the Winter” book, and was written by Ernie ·Ernie Provencher improvised and played music. Provided by Todd Paris.
“When he mentioned the aurora,” Fisher said, “we sat quietly, looking from one side of the hall to the other, as if we were marveling at the northern lights. When he mentioned inheritance, we tried to pass Create a tree shape that changes as we move from the stage to the bottom to suggest this.”
Pataky’s poem directly uses the second person pronoun “you” to describe the melting zone of the glacier. “Your snow line is fluctuating,” Pataki wrote, “It moves every morning / the ridge line on the tectonic plate / moves as fast as / the nail grows.” From macro to micro, from structure to Nail, this poem unfolds with the combination of the earth and the body. It creates a point of matter in the process of entering the earth, especially ablation.
Ablation is generally a process of removal or destruction. Especially in glaciology, the glacier melting zone is the area where the amount of ice decreases. The technical reasons for the decrease in ice volume may include any combination of melting, sublimation, evaporation, ice disintegration, and aeolian processes (such as blowing snow, avalanches, etc.). Crucially, the ablation zone is a place of loss. It names the part of the glacier that is declining. In this case, the ablation zone triggers death, which is the kind of loss that we most deeply understand in terms of the body, thus making the specific medium of dance sharper.
“You are an aurora,” Pataki wrote, “It’s like a fleeting-“, the dancer interprets the image in a symmetrical sitting posture, with his back facing the audience and his face depicting the distance in Kennecott Park. The long curved hall ceiling of the sky beyond. But soon they rose up, embodying the next image of the poem, the aurora, like life, like ice, has passed.
But in essence, the “dissolution zone” choreographed by Williamson and Fisher is not just a dance about loss. Transient and rapidly changing-these are the true state of the material, but for this audience, the real essence of the performance lies in the dancer’s interpretation of scale. In fact, Wrangell St.Elias National Park and Nature Reserve includes the world’s largest non-polar ice field, North America’s longest valley glacier, and Some of the largest, most and most numerous othersIn short, the scale here is amazing. But human sight is limited in time and space.
Performance opens up different ways of perception. It makes the hugeness, vastness and sheer weight of glaciers clearly visible through human form. From molecules to thousands of years, we see the air, rocks, ice, and years with strange clarity, surpassing and surrounding us every day.
A day hike in the Wrangell Mountains offers beautiful views of the upper reaches of the Kennicott Valley. The summit of Donohue Mountain barely clears this line of sight on a small bonanza slope, while Blackburn Mountain pales in comparison. A part of the upper reaches of the Kennecott Glacier can be seen outside of Lake Donohonunatak. In the lower part of the foreground valley is the root glacier. Courtesy of Jeremy Pataky.
Corinna Cook is the author of Leavetakings, a collection of essays (University of Alaska Press, 2020). She is a former Fulbright researcher, Alaska Literary Prize winner and Rasmussen Foundation winner. Corinna holds a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. Her next book project explores the art, ecology and history of Alaska-Yukon. For more information, please visit corinnacook.com.
