Evening-Length Dance Works

1993 “The Grandma Moses Project”

An evening-length dance work based on the paintings of
American folkartist Anna Mary Robertson Moses-
“Grandma Moses” (Images used with permission and licensed
by the Grandma Moses Properties Company)

Choreography: Loretta Livingston
Commissioned Musical Score: Murielle Hamilton, acoustic score featuring American
folk instruments
Costume and Quilt Backdrop Design: Martha Ferrara
Lighting Design: Doc Ballard
Hand Props: Loretta Livingston/ Martha Ferrara
Yearling Cow designed and constructed by: Helga Tacreiter

Dancers: Lynne DeMarco, Loretta Livingston, Michael Mizerany, David Plettner,
Madeline Soglin, Emily Stansberry, Stacia Voytek (understudy and alternate)

Premiere: March 27, 1993, UCLA Wadsworth Theater, Los Angeles, CA

Program notes and content:
Cast of Characters, in order of appearance

The Hired Girl: Lynne DeMarco
The Two Daughters: Emily C. Stansberry and Madeline Soglin
The Hired Man: Michael Mizerany
The Mother: Loretta Livingston
The Father: David Plettner

Dance Sections:

1. Spring The dance starts with images of a day’s beginning. The hired girl does her
chores while dreaming of her life to come. The hired man feels at one with the land
and his work. The children have endless energy for play and mischief, while the mother
is confident as mistress of her family and domain. Spring is a time to feel alive and
energetic, at one with the earth as it wakes from thesleep of Winter.
It is the childhood of the year.

2. Summer In a rare day of leisure, the family and hired help share a July Fourth
Independence Day picnic.Summer is a time for celebrating the long, sunny days of
full growth and abundant color, where all living things fill out and bloom. It is the
prime of the year’s life.

3. Autumn With a touch of chill in the air, the whole community works together to put
away for Winter. It is a time of ghosts, both the kind at Halloween and the kind that
haunt the memories of the adults as they age. Autumn is a time for growing things to
change and age, and a time to be busy preparing for the Winter to come.
It is the maturing time of the year.

4. Winter The landscape has a stillness to it, punctuated by the lively outdoor activities
of the family and hired help. Indoors, they celebrate a year well lived and the pleasure
of each other’s company. Winter is austere and bleak, but with a beauty all its own.
Outside, all life has on aged and gone to sleep,but inside the heart is warm and looks
to Spring.

Program note from the Artistic Director:

The artists involved in this project have worked collaboratively, researching the paintings
and life of Grandma Moses and the time period and geographical locations in which she
lived. They then worked to create a dance production that would convey the spirit of
the images found in the paintings as well as the seasons and times that they portray.
Not intended as a biography of Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961),
“The Grandma Moses Project” is a celebration through movement, music, visual design
and performance of a time in America’s rural past that linked the people who lived
on the land to the greater community of nature, growing cycles, animals, weather,
and-in a deep way-to each other. This is a production created for audience members
of all ages by contemporary artists who found inspiration in the lively, painted images
of a woman looking back on a life well lived.

Awards: 1993 Lester Horton Dance Award-Outstanding Company
Performance Citation of Recognition from the California Department of
Education/Delaine Eastin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction State
and National Touring, including Alaska