Waterworks 2018 Projects produced by Mountain Time Arts, founded by Dede Taylor, Mary Ellen Strom and Jim Madden.
Performer and production cordinator.
Performance: August 23 and 24, 2018 at 6pm
at Missouri Headwaters State Park, 1585 Trident Rd, Three Forks, MT 59752
The CHERRY RIVER public art project is a collaboration of Indigenous scholar and musician Shane Doyle and artist Mary Ellen Strom. Doyle and Strom’s project examines the history and ecology of this significant site using the flow of the three rivers as a narrative structure and a cultural bridge. Live musicians will perform on drift boats floating on the three rivers toward the confluence of the Missouri or what Native Peoples called “Where the Rivers Mix”. A choir of local singers, who both sing and speak, will be positioned on the river bank. The work will be composed and arranged by music director Ruby Fulton. Large-scale sculptures will feature the color of local chokecherries, a deep magenta, and red ochre, a pigment found in the region.
CHERRY RIVER is the Indigenous place name of the East Gallatin River. Lewis and Clark designated the river as the Gallatin in 1805. The name CHERRY RIVER honors and describes the prolific chokecherry bushes that grow on the river’s banks. This shrub was an essential staple for numerous groups of Native Peoples and continues to provide crucial sustenance for bees, birds, small mammals and bears in the Rocky Mountain West.
CHERRY RIVER, Where the Rivers Mix understands collaborative inquiry as an authentic means to generate new knowledges of this region’s most salient cultural and environmental issues. CHERRY RIVER puts a spotlight on the indigenous cultural and environmental narratives of the Headwaters location.
Edited by Mary Ellen Strom
Performer and Assistant Choreographer Ann Carlson and Mountain Time Arts In the production of The Symphonic Body/ Water produced by Mountain Time Arts based in Bozeman, Montana.
Performance Dates:
Wednesday, July 18 and Thursday, July 19 at 7:00 pm in Gallatin Valley Friday, July 20 and Saturday, July 21 at 7:00 pm in Paradise Valley
Mountain Time Arts is pleased to bring internationally renowned choreographer Ann Carlson to southwestern Montana this July. Carlson’s majestic opus THE SYMPHONIC BODY/WATER will feature 60 performers from our region. THE SYMPHONIC BODY’s performers are community members including agricultural producers, politicians, anglers, environmentalists, business leaders, scientists, artists and more. Together they will spotlight the human labor and activity of our locality’s diverse water workers. Instead of instruments, individuals in Carlson’s orchestra perform gestures based on the motions of their workday. MTA has commissioned celebrated Montana architect Ben Lloyd to design an orchestral shell to house Carlson’s unique performance work. THE SYMPHONIC BODY/WATER will take place in two magnificent locations in Montana’s Gallatin and Paradise Valleys.
Edited and produced by Mary Ellen Strom
Assistant Editor Elly Stormer Vadseth
