Rose's Cross Country

Rose's Cross Country is a long traveling phrase made for Rose Marie Wright during the company's residency at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Performed during class recesses, Wright moved between pedestrian and vehicular traffic, blurring the lines between life and art. "The local police were getting calls every day from people saying 'This woman is freaking out, she must be on LSD,'" Wright remembers. "Classes were changing, people were walking by, but mostly they tried to ignore me. Except the construction workers at the library, who would hoot and holler every day. Then on the last day I did the piece, they applauded." 

Although the dance appears casually improvisational, it is guided by a strict choreographic outline.  A series of locomotive and stationary dance phrases, combined with routine movements such as folding a sweater at the waist and skipping, are re-sequenced in performance at will.