July 25, 2000

Lava Love Brings Explosive Energy to MASS MoCA's Hunter Center

(July 25, 2000 -- North Adams, MA) On Saturday, August 19, at 8 pm a troupe of fearless performers charge the theater with explosive energy in Lava Love. Choreographer Sarah East Johnson's troupe, LAVA, consists of seven strong women who challenge conventional ideas about gender, strength and courage. With high-energy dance, gymnastics, trapeze acrobatics, human pyramids, and even wrestling, these women create stunning visual images and demonstrate strength and incredible mutual trust. They weave a complex web of symbolism and metaphor and still maintain a level of informality, which allows for surprising comedy.

Johnson combines her backgrounds in ballet, modern dance, circus skills and geology to create a multi-level show using dance movement as metaphor for the earth's natural cycle of destruction and rebirth. The volcano symbolizes fundamental life principles including the fact that danger is often a necessary part of growth. The dancers work against Golden Gloves silver medalist Nancy Brooks Brody's backdrops of nature-inspired primal movement and the lively music of Babe the Blue Ox. According to Newsweek "Johnson's troupe creates an exhilarating circus of women on the move."

Originally trained in ballet, Johnson branched into modern dance in college. It was there that her interest in geology and biology began. Johnson doesn't see the two as unrelated but rather views the natural dynamic movement of the earth as inspiration for dance. Johnson came up with the idea for Lava Love while visiting Mount St. Helens. She was shocked to see so much natural life growing up out of the ashes. Johnson says she "thought that contrast of destruction and creation was a good inspiration for the dance. Life always comes back-it pushes right out of the soil." Her interest in the circus came while living in New York. Fascinated by the downtown improvisers she learned juggling, stilt dancing, acrobatics and even fire-eating. Eventually, Johnson moved her troupe to San Francisco to attend circus school and add that lively dynamic to all of their work.

Tickets to Lava Love are $16 for orchestra and $12 for mezzanine. Tickets are available by calling the MASS MoCA Box Office at 413.662.2111 or online at www.massmoca.org. Tickets may also be purchased in person from 10 - 6 daily at MASS MoCA at 87 Marshall St. in North Adams, Mass.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Katherine Myers
(413) 664-4481 x8113
katherine@massmoca.org