Susan Dowling

The Myth of Modern Dance

Collaborating with choreographer Douglas Dunn, Atlas uses anthropological text, satirical movement, and vividly colored chroma-keyed backgrounds in an episodic, often humorous look at the evolution of modern dance.

Mountain View

A dance drama work that, through movement and very little spoken text, details the interaction of several people residing at or visiting a motel or motor inn named Mountain View. The work spans a period of about 24 hours, following the individuals through late afternoon, an evening spent in the motel bar, and a picnic-style social gathering the next day. Some of the characters encountered are the family who runs the motel (a mother, her young adult son, and an older man, perhaps her father); a spunky, tomboyish girl; an interracial couple lodging at the motel; a young mother; a pair of newlyweds; a barfly; three people involved in a love triangle; and the punkish friends of the motel owner's son.

Mountain View

A dance drama work that, through movement and very little spoken text, details the interaction of several people residing at or visiting a motel or motor inn named Mountain View. The work spans a period of about 24 hours, following the individuals through late afternoon, an evening spent in the motel bar, and a picnic-style social gathering the next day. Some of the characters encountered are the family who runs the motel (a mother, her young adult son, and an older man, perhaps her father); a spunky, tomboyish girl; an interracial couple lodging at the motel; a young mother; a pair of newlyweds; a barfly; three people involved in a love triangle; and the punkish friends of the motel owner's son.

Turtle Dreams

Turtle Dreams, produced for WGBH-TV, originally aired September 2, 1983. Shot by Ping Chong. Composed by Meredith Monk, performed by her and her Vocal Ensemble.

Secret of the Waterfall

The confluence of words and movement propels this multi-layered collaboration by Atlas, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and poets Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Dunn's athletic choreography is performed to the rhythms, cadences, and associative meanings of the poets' "cascade of words," which function as music. Atlas introduces narrative references, ironically staging the dance in unexpected locations, including domestic interiors and vehicles. In a self-referential deconstruction that punctures the theatrical illusion, the poets are seen reading their texts and interacting as self-conscious performers within the dance. Atlas and his collaborators intersect the language of words with the language of the body.

You Little Wild Heart

A film set to the songs of Bruce Springsteen. Conceived and choreographed by Marta Renzi in 1981 for the WGBCH New Television Workshop.

Ex-Romance

Atlas' fascination with "narrative, psychology, dance, and flights of fantasy," is manifested in this dynamic videodance musical. Here the postmodern choreography of Karole Armitage is performed by Armitage, Michael Clark and others to American pop and Latin music. Framed and interrupted by the ironic observations of two parodic "public television" commentators, the dancers play fictionalized versions of themselves in a wry tale of contemporary romance, in which the dance literally and metaphorically advances the narrative. Atlas deftly stages elaborate dance sequences in unlikely settings — an airport lounge, a gas station, a baggage conveyor belt — that are presented alternately as fact and fantasy. Atlas manipulates the representation of truth and artifice, reality and fiction in this meta-narrative.