about us
In the hilltowns of western Massachusetts, among the hemlock peaks of the Westfield River bend, you’ll find a meandering country road that leads you to our beautiful Atland artist retreat. Atland’s 41 wooded acres are between the beautiful Berkshire hills and the Pioneer Valley.
Atland is a small, women-owned endeavor. It’s a beautiful, sustainably-built home that we aim to share. Our mission is to provide artists (working in any discipline) with an opportunity to create in a supportive and serene environment. Artists who are awarded our annual fellowships are provided with access to a comfortable living space, a studio/workshop, miles of hiking trails, and a small pickup truck to get around town. In these challenging times, we are committed to figuring out ways to provide ongoing support for artists, whether that means gifting space or financial support, or fostering connections to producers and teaching opportunities.
Each summer, we host a festival that is open to local and visiting dance artists with a focus on experimentation, improvisation, site-specific practices, and dance film. Some of our dance fellows are invited back to share their work and/or teaching practice with festival participants.
We’re only 15 miles to Northampton and the Five Colleges, 120 miles west of Boston, 180 miles north of NYC, 20 miles south from Berkshire East ski slopes and Mass MoCA, and a walk away from swimming holes, hiking trails, orchards, and farm stands. We’re a nearby stop along the route for those hiking the Appalachian Trail, 20 minutes from the Northampton Amtrak Train Station, and 1 hour from the Hartford Bradley International Airport.
TORI LAWRENCE
ELLIE GOUDIE-AVERILL
-
Raised in Georgia, Tori Lawrence is a Massachusetts-based choreographer, filmmaker, and educator who creates site-specific multimedia performances and digital/analog dance films.
She is a guest lecturer at Bennington College and Smith College, and was awarded the 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence and Dance Lecturer position at Middlebury College, where she taught courses in Movement & Media, Improvisation, and Contemporary Technique. Tori graduated from Franklin & Marshall College and received her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship.
She has recently been awarded artist residencies in Norway at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder and USF Verftet, where she will produce new work Winter 2023. Other awarded artist residencies and fellowships include: Yaddo, Djerassi, Playa, Brunakra, Chez Bushwick, Ucross Foundation, Charlotte Street Foundation, Dance Ireland, and Budapest Workshop Foundation.
She recently collaborated with choreographer Sara Shelton Mann on a performance installation with performances at Space 124 (San Francisco), Counterpulse (San Francisco), Fresh Festival @ Joe Goode Annex (San Francisco), SCDT (Northampton), Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (San Francisco), and Dock 11 (Berlin).
-
Originally from the Midwest, Ellie Goudie-Averill is a dance artist and educator who works with dancers of all ages on technique and performance. Since graduating with her MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa, she has served as a professor at Temple University, Bucknell University, the University of Kansas, Franklin & Marshall, and Connecticut College. She has danced professionally for Sara Shelton Mann, Susan Rethorst, Lucinda Childs, Bronwen MacArthur, Group Motion, and more. Ellie is a regular collaborator and dancer with Tori Lawrence + Co. in dance films and site-specific works and has been with the company for ten years. She currently teaches at Amherst, Smith, and Keene State Colleges, and at the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton, MA.
ainsley tharp
Maghan BAPTISTE
-
ainsley elizabeth tharp is a Bay Area (Ohlone territory) based alchemist + artist + activist. She grew up in a Texas town called Victoria(Karankawas territory), she carries with her influence from catholic school, celtic folklore, mexican/tijuana culture, and white southern trailer trash. She creates visual landscapes as performance using various modes and media, such as movement, magic, ritual, video, projection, lighting, and the sculpting of readymade objects. ainsley is a University of Iowa Graduate with a BFA in choreography and movement practices. She has performed internationally in the Bay Area, Berlin, Brussels, Iowa City, and Austin Texas.
Her work is queer, transcends boundaries and norms, and surpasses the conventional yes and no. Her work is femme. Her work is a part of the future.
-
Maghan Baptiste is a poet first, with a natural inclination towards dance, movement, cooking & making art in various forms that keep her creative practice on fire. She lives and loves in Western Massachusetts, and spends her time on improvised quilts, reading, exploring bodywork, feeding dancers, and learning about natural wine. You can find some of her work at maghwrites.com
MARIE LYNN HAAS
SETH WENGER
-
Marie Lynn Haas is an improvisational mover and maker. Her embodied and written research is situated at the crossroads of dance, science, autism, and healing. She approaches her work as an interdisciplinary, transformational practice—one that weaves art-making with critical inquiry and attempts to engage creative problem-solving strategies across the arts and autism and also within a broader range of contexts and systems of knowledge. As an improviser, Marie is drawn to practices that engage emergent frameworks. She initiates projects that are process-driven and seeks collaborations that investigate how we come together and cultivate opportunities for co-creation. Whether she’s working with another dancer or an autistic child, Marie’s process draws on shared movement practices that help us embody empathy and bring us into partnership. Marie is currently developing projects that explore how we partner with the natural world and the spaces that we create, inhabit, and neglect across her terrain. These new works are rituals akin to ceremonial practices—they center on empathy and reciprocity and invite us to be in relationship with our more-than-human world.
-
Seth Wenger is a vocalist and instrument designer captivated by the relationship of sound and space. “Wherever we are sounds relentlessly try to speak with us. Harmony and dissonance are synonyms for consent and dissent--my creative practice makes use of sound and space to complicate this binary. Carefully learning how to listen to a space precedes my decision of how to answer it musically. This chorus of tones--environment and response--is not only transformed by, but transforms the material environments we inhabit. Intentional and imaginative sonic conversations with our environments transcend fixed material understandings of place.” Originally from Iowa, Seth has a background in choral and folk music. In collaboration with the Brothertown Indian Nation, Seth is currently working on an experimental humanities research project around a collection of tunes from Thomas Commuck’s 1845 manuscript, Indian Melodies. He recently graduated from Yale University, where he studied music and ritual in nineteenth century North America.
THEO ARMSTRONG
AMY LYNNe BARR
-
Theo Armstrong (he/they) is a dancer, arts administrator, and writer based in Brooklyn. He has contributed stage management, production, marketing, and admin support to zavé martohardjono, Sarah Chien, Adrienne Westwood, Marion Spencer, NDA/Performance Mix, and Pepper Fajans/Brooklyn Studios for Dance. He currently works at the intersection of person and persona through the drag alter ego of Luxury Bones. In his human incarnation, he has performed with Narcissister, m i c c a, Thea Little, ChristinaNoel and the Creature, Rebecca Pappas, Milka Djordevich, Andrea Haenggi/the Environmental Performance Agency, and other fun friends. His written work has appeared in Isele Magazine, Sinking City, The Brooklyn Rail, and Culturebot, among other places. They received a BA in English Literature and a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa.
-
Creating work that mixes humor, poignancy and extreme physicality, Amy Lynne Barr engages the audience viscerally with choreography that is intellectual in conception and creation. Barr is a NJ-based choreographer and performer with an MFA in Choreography from the University of Iowa. She has been honored to work with Martha Clarke, Jennifer Kayle, Charlotte Adams, Doug Nielsen and many others. Barr’s work has been shown in Illinois, Indiana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Chicago, New York, New Hampshire, Iowa, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She directs SOS DanceProject and dances for Tori Lawrence & Co, Invisible River, The Naked Stark and ChrisMastersDance. Barr is an adjunct professor at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.
