As Sugar Loaves Train Horses (2013)

Choreography: Abigail Levine

Text: John Cage, Lecture on Nothing

Dancers: Carolyn Hall, Abigail Levine, Aaron Mattocks

Readers: Mark Nelson and Danielle Kuhlmann

Structure is simple because it can be thought out, figured out, measured. It is a discipline which, accepted, in return accepts whatever, even those rare moments of ecstasy, which, as sugar loaves train horses, train us to make what we make.        --John Cage, Lecture on Nothing

As Sugar Loaves Train Horses transposes sections of John Cage's Lecture on Nothing onto bodies in space. The dance houses movement sentences which literally mark the dancers' movements on the walls and floor. The space, in turn, comes to reflect the particulars of the dancers' bodies, as well as an accumulation of the performance itself. 

Premier

Mount Tremper Arts Festival (June 2013)

Press

"Dancers slowly walked the edges of the room drawing with pieces of charcoal. They cooly marked their movements, the charcoal trailing the reach of their arms until they naturally drifted off a platform, a step, met with a corner, pulled on a light switch. When they arrived at the audience border, they circled around us and began their trajectory again, the environment dictating the dance, or more precisely, the environment was the dance." Andrea Kleine, The Dancers Will Win

"If you think Mount Tremper is "too far away," think again. This year's terrific lineup includes dancer-choreographers Michelle Boulé, Abigail Levine and Karinne Keithley Syers." The New York Times

"Another summer of adventurous dance, music, performance art, and barbecue in the Catskills begins with the choreographer Abigail Levine" The New Yorker

Abigail Levine kicks off Mount Tremper Summer Festival