Thing that make us

an evening of new dance theater

by Molly Fletcher Lynch-Clark and Lailye Weidman

With her multidisciplinary ensemble cast, Lynch-Clark has devised an imagined space with science fiction-like flair. Facing an unknown future, the work asks, “What if a society was organized around shared humanity?”

Weidman’s iterative solo project Other Refrains wrestles with the weight of ancestry and lineage, utilizing family gestures and embodied memories as a map to move through present times. Through storytelling, dance, and vocalization, Weidman weaves threads from her own family, while reaching toward collective reckoning with the things that make us.

While drawing from distinct practices and aesthetics, both artists combine movement and text, engaging the idiom of “dance theater” from a playful and experimental approach. They both craft performances that are refreshingly relatable and direct, while also embracing visceral and unexpected languages of the body.

Molly Fletcher Lynch-Clark is a choreographer, performer, and educator of dance based in Western Massachusetts. She is currently on faculty at Umass Amherst and Keene State College where she teaches modern dance technique, experiential anatomy, composition and research studies. Previously, she has been on faculty at Sonoma State University and the College of San Mateo. Molly holds both a postgraduate degree in Advanced Dance Studies and an MFA in Contemporary Dance from The London Contemporary Dance School at The Place in London. Molly has had the pleasure of touring her work throughout much of Europe and the UK, as well as the West and the East Coast of the US. She has been awarded residencies at the Accademia Dell’ Arte in Arezzo Italy, the Foundry in Oakland CA, the Garage in San Francisco, the Pigi Pefani School in Peania Greece, the Sausalito Civic Center, the SAFEhouse in San Francisco, The Leeds Arts Gallery in England, the Zagreb Dance Center in Croatia, the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton and Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Her choreographic work has recently been recognized and is the 2023 recipient of the KSC Adjunct Association's Choreography and Performance Award. In addition to her work in dance, Molly is a certified yoga and pilates instructor and is currently working towards her black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Lailye Weidman (MFA, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign) is a choreographer, educator, and a queer parent raising a feisty toddler in Western Massachusetts. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hampshire College, where she combines improvisation, somatics, and mindfulness with a focus on the politics of movement and embodied action. Through multiple projects over the past two decades, Lailye has been looking at the forces that move us and asking how we respond to those forces. Her work has been shown on the East and West coasts, the Midwest, and Europe. She has been an artist-in-residence at APE in Northampton, SPACE in Portland, Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Light Box in Detroit, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance (iLAND) in New York City, Pieter PASD and Hothouse/UCLA in Los Angeles, and the SEEDS Festival at Earthdance. Lailye received a BA from UCLA Dept of World Arts and Cultures | Dance and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. In her studies, she was influenced by dialogue, collaboration, and mentorship with many phenomenal artists and teachers including Victoria Marks, Chen Chieh Yu, Simone Forti, Jennifer Monson, Cynthia Oliver, and Terre O’Connor. She has also worked independently and collectively to produce dance and interdisciplinary events, residencies, and festivals in New England and beyond. She was Associate Editor for several issues of Contact Quarterly, working alongside editors Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson, and Melinda Buckwalter. She remains invested in archiving and storytelling about and through dance practice.