Year: 2025-2026
DanceForce Member: Ivan Sygoda
Artist: Tatiana Desardouin
Community Partners: American Dance Festival; Catskill Mountain Foundation; Works & Process
Audience: 232
County: Greene

This final installment of DanceForce support for the completion and presentation of “Dimensions” seals the deal, so to speak, on our pivotal role as a co-commissioner of “Dimensions,” Tatiana Desardouin’s ambitious new multi-media work for her Passion Fruit dance company. Specifically, the DanceForce contribution supports the endgame of the process. American Dance Festival Director Jodee Nimerichter wanted to present the premiere of “Dimensions” at the 2025 Festival, but she and Tatiana realized that additional tech time would be necessary before the work would be ready for presentation. Thanks to the intervention of Duke Dang (Works & Process, NYC), Jodee was able to secure a weeklong tech residency at the Orpheum Theatre in Tannersville, NY, one of the sites administered by Pam Weisberg (Catskill Mountain Foundation, Hunter). Coincidentally, Pam was a founding member of DanceForce. This act of commissioning by the American Dance Festival assured the successful birthing of the new work.

Tatiana realized early on that the non-malleable expenses of the planned technical (primarily visual) aspects of “Dimensions” stretched available resources to the point that she was unable to pay her design collaborators anything close to what they were “worth.” Yet they remained committed to Tatiana and to the project, whose values they share. Rectifying this has been a priority for Tatiana. Earmarking the DF $2,000 as additional compensation to Lauriane Ogay (Photography, $1,200) and Huiyi Chen (Motion Capture, $800) assures the ongoing availability of the visual elements they bring to the work as it continues to evolve during 2025-2026 after the ADF premiere.

Since her designation as a Juried Bessie Artist in 2022, and as a function of DanceForce’s commitment to foster statewide opportunities for each year’s honoree, DanceForce members Ivan Sygoda (unaffiliated, in collaboration with Community Partner Adam Weinert at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Tivoli), Cynthia Williams (Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Geneva), in partnership with Robin Collen (Suny Potsdam), Kim Engel (UAlbany), Toni Smith (unaffiliated), Elena Mosely (Kuumba Dance & Drum, Hudson) and Jim Self (collaborating with The Cherry Space, Ithaca) have involved themselves in various ways in supporting Tatiana and Passion Fruit and in, essentially, co-commissioning Dimensions. This represents over a third of our membership working collaboratively over two years towards a shared goal. Statistically, this represents a three-decade high water mark in the degree to which our members have been able to coordinate their efforts in support of an artist. In the aggregate, and directly attributable to DanceForce intervention, Passion Fruit benefitted from four weeks of paid residency time, much of which consisted of uncontested studio creative time, and, crucially, given the technical requirements of Tatiana’s vision, theater time. The weeklong Kaatsbaan residency was almost entirely devoted to tech. Their experience at Kaatsbaan was crucial in that it enabled the collaborators to gauge the additional tech time they would need to achieve their vision, and gave them confidence that the planned 2025 endgame was realistic.