Sample Residency 1: Brenau University

This two-week residency focused on student creation and performance of Ice Cycle, a work inspired by Sperling’s experience dancing in the Arctic. Students learned about climate change’s causes and impacts as they embodied, through choreographic structures, the geophysical processes of sea ice formation and melting. The residency culminated in the students’ public performance in Gainsville’s Downtown Center. The program included an inter-disciplinary panel with the Dean of the College, the Director of Sustainability, and professors from Biology and Dance. Throughout the residency, Sperling taught modern technique, introducing her Fractal Pathways method which cultivates students’ awareness of their bodies relationship with the environment. Lastly, Sperling made many class visits and delivered a lecture about her experience on a polar science mission. Listen to this WBCX interview about the residency to learn more about how science informed the process.

Sample Residency 2: Skidmore College

This multi-pronged weeklong residency was co-sponsored by the Office of Sustainability and Dance Department. Sperling led a site-specific composition workshop for students which culminated in a campus performance. The work focused on enhancing awareness of their dancing bodies in relation to larger ecological systems. Sperling also facilitated a public panel on Arts, Climate Change and Activism with professors from Environmental Science and Dance. Sperling’s residency touched multiple departments and included such activities as visiting a solar energy plant with environmental studies students and lecturing on dance-environmental activism for a core humanities seminar. In addition, she taught composition and modern classes, introducing her Fractal Pathways method, using ecological concepts to stimulate dancemaking.

Sample Residency 3: Hunter College, Arts Across the Curriculum

Funded by The Mellon Foundation, the prestigious Arts Across the Curriculum initiative at Hunter College brought Jody Sperling and Time Lapse Dance to campus for a full-company performance of Bringing Home the Arctic. Expressing the dynamism and fragility of sea ice, this impactful program transports the polar icescape to the stage and helps make the drastic changes happening in far-flung regions feel more immediate. Deirdre Towers (Dance Enthusiast) calls the work “chillingly apt.” The residency also included a masterclass and an interdisciplinary panel discussion featuring Sperling alongside professors from the Environmental Science and Anthropology Departments.