News & Upcoming Catherine Gallant/DANCE
Fertile Ground Virtual Showing January 2021 presented by Green Space
Stay tuned for our upcoming COVID salon performances at Arts Alive in March 2021!! LIVE and in-person for 16 audience members!
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Escape from the House of Mercy is inspired by the infamous institution from the turn of the 20th century once located in Inwood Hill Park in Upper Manhattan, NYC. We are in the process of research and development to create a site-specific work in Inwood Hill Park that references ideas and questions about social stratification, confinement and isolation, rehabilitation, work, poverty and homelessness. Using a combination of choreographic episodes and a sound score which shifts in tone from bombastic to soothing,
The House of Mercy was a home for “abandoned and troubled women”, in fact, it was closer to a prison or workhouse to which most inhabitants were brought against their wills. Here a young woman could be locked up for years for an offense such as dancing in public or walking alone at night. Inhabitants were routinely punished with gags to the mouth, starvation diets, and leg irons. This inhumane and demoralizing treatment, in the guise of rehabilitation, was part of an era when the rights of the poor, especially women, were completely denied. Related institutions in NYC included the Magdeline Asylum (part of the Magdeline Laundry system run by the Catholic Church in both Ireland and the US) and the House of Rest for tuberculosis patients. Why are these now invisible places from the past important in the present? How is honest self-expression still punished in our own time? Mining the persistent feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness in the face of deceptive and impassive authority, Escape from the House of Mercy will evoke intense emotional responses and physical human connections to women's history. Meaning will be embedded and felt underneath the historical information, as we work to create through improvisation, score building, personal histories, poetry, literary references and vocalization/singing.
The House of Mercy was a home for “abandoned and troubled women”, in fact, it was closer to a prison or workhouse to which most inhabitants were brought against their wills. Here a young woman could be locked up for years for an offense such as dancing in public or walking alone at night. Inhabitants were routinely punished with gags to the mouth, starvation diets, and leg irons. This inhumane and demoralizing treatment, in the guise of rehabilitation, was part of an era when the rights of the poor, especially women, were completely denied. Related institutions in NYC included the Magdeline Asylum (part of the Magdeline Laundry system run by the Catholic Church in both Ireland and the US) and the House of Rest for tuberculosis patients. Why are these now invisible places from the past important in the present? How is honest self-expression still punished in our own time? Mining the persistent feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness in the face of deceptive and impassive authority, Escape from the House of Mercy will evoke intense emotional responses and physical human connections to women's history. Meaning will be embedded and felt underneath the historical information, as we work to create through improvisation, score building, personal histories, poetry, literary references and vocalization/singing.
