Woodstock Times
Mount Tremper Arts Festival
by Paul Smart

July 17, 2008

Dancer and choreographer Aynsley Vandenbroucke, co-founder and director of the ambitious Mt. Tremper Arts Festival inaugurating Saturday, July 19 at their new arts center just west of Zen Mountain Monastery on the way to Phoenicia, says the idea for the mix of photographic exhibitions and lectures, dance recitals, musical performances and good old fun running through Labor Day started germinating for her and her husband Mathew Pokoik when both were still kids.

It gestated as each built their art, step by step, and established creative careers in New York City- this idea of getting friends new and old together in a bucolic setting for workshopping and performance, for pushing art to new limits with lots of room for feedback.

“Matt grew up coming to the area a lot when he was little,” Vandenbroucke says of the couple’s decision to move to Mt. Tremper a couple of years ago and build a post and beam barn as an arts center and get hopping on their festival dreams. “He also new a lot of people in the area from having gone to Bard.”

The 1st Annual Mount Tremper Arts Festival (MTA) begins Saturday, July 19, with a party that kicks off a chock-full season of contemporary art and dance along with a variety of educational programs. Included for the opening night fun, starting at 8pm, with an opening reception for “Signs,” a photo exhibition featuring works by Walker Evans, Tim Davis, Shannon Ebner, Lisa Kereszi, John Lehr, Christian Patterson, Zoe Strauss, Brian Ulrich, Stephen Shore, and Pokoik, a dance installation exploring modern decadence by jill sigman/thinkdance with ethno-fusion DJ Joro Boro, and a 10pm dance party featuring the hot urban Klezmer/punk band Golem.

It continues in the coming weeks with Saturday evening dance performances by the founder’s Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group performing outdoors on July 26, Jonah Bokaer and poet Anne Carson on August 2, Rindfleisch on August 9, Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre on August 16, Hilary Easton + Company on August 23 and a closing Mt. Tremper Arts Labor Day weekend festival and party featuring performance work by Ariane Anthony, Monica Bill Barnes, Marisela La Grave, Liz Sargent, and Enrico Wey on August 30. All top-shelf explorers of new movement, proving dance’s current position as the premiere art form of the day.

Thursday nights will feature a 7pm lecture series exploring issues connected to dance and photograph, including discussions with dancers and local academics; while Sundays and Mondays will be given to movement classes, lunchtime dance sessions, and kids’ activities.

Vandenbroucke notes that her dance card was filled up with troupes she’s been watching, and wanting to know better, for years now; Pokoik’s exhibition is made up of artists working within similar fields of interest as he.

She says that the two, who split time between Upstate and the City, where their performing and exhibition careers still hold them, have found their decision to start Mt. Tremper Arts a godsend for creativity.

“Sharing meals with everyone in my company, taking long hikes, just being up here somehow adds a depth to it all,” Vandenbroucke says, noting that her husband has found similar inspiration for his photography, which is coming out of a series on world cities into new areas exploring the medium’s manner of appropriating objects and ideas, even words, into its imagery. “We’ve also had rich feedback from everyone who’s come to our performances… It feels like people are really generous with their watching of art because they’ve not been so inundated as audiences in the City tend to be.”

She added that the overall idea behind Mt. Tremper Arts and its new festival is quite simple.

“It’s all about establishing deep relationships,” she said. Which, in turn, deepens ones’ own relationship with creativity.

For more on Mt. Tremper Arts and its first annual Mt. Tremper Arts Festival, all taking place at 647 South Plank Road in Mount Tremper (look for the new driveway), call 688-9893 or visit www.mttremperarts.com.