By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

Rappahannock Ncwa Contributing Writer

Painters, sculptors, poets and writers have long found inspiration in the peaceful beauty of rural settings. But performing artists are more likely to discover their Muse in the crowded city with its proliferation of stages in theaters, clubs, civic centers and auditoriums.

First Fruits: A Contemporary Ritual, an ambitious and innovative collaboration with original choreography, original score and an array of ritual art, proves convincingly that all artists can flourish in the country.

The combination performance and exhibition grew out of Joel Royer’s quest for completion. Hoyer weaves

i; ritual baskets that evoke the art forms of the ancients and celebrate mankind’s now tenuous connections to the natural world. But the baskets, fetishes and jewelry he creates “could truly become ritual objects only by going through a ritual,” the artist explained. So he set out to find a ritual.

He took his idea to Sally Nash, a choreographer and dancer who, like Hoyer, had abandoned Washington, D.C. for the foothills of the Blue Ridge. In Rappahannock County, she had founded The Last Minute Wood Company, named for the scramble that greets the arrival of winter in the country, and in the intervening decade, she turned talented novices into accomplished dancers. Working closely with her troupe, she drew on her experiences and theirs to create stunning dance drama, part improvisational and part meticulously choreographed.

She agreed to perform the ritual and began a search of her own for the form. “Then this book just fell into my hands,” Nash recalled. Lewis Hyde’s The Gift describes other cultures where gift cycles exist. “Some were very evocative. I picked the ones that meant the most to me and I started acting them out. The poetry of his prose brought the movement out of a very deep place within me. It’s not mime but dance.”

(See FRUITS, p. 18)

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