One of New England’s cultural treasures was hidden in plain sight until 2014. That’s when the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry was effectively pulled from mothballs at the University of Connecticut’s Depot Campus, ten minutes west of Storrs, and given a brand spanking new home at the front door of the main campus.

The move was a feather in the cap for John Bell, the director of the institute since 2007 and a longtime puppeteer himself. As a young actor, Bell cut his teeth with the downtown New York performance scene of the 1960s, a political mashup of happenings, experimental film and dance, performance art and puppetry that took place on the city’s streets. While at Vermont’s Middlebury College—from which he graduated in 1973—Bell saw the Bread and Puppet Theater perform at nearby Goddard College, where they were in residence. He was so smitten he later became a member of the legendary group that has become a fixture at mass parades and protest marches.

“I came to puppetry as an actor and was attracted to the variety of things involved,” says Bell. “You could create theater about current events, without having to wait 20 years to get funding or a proper theater venue.”

In that sense, Bell’s path to puppetry differed from that of Frank W. Ballard, for whom the institute is named. Ballard was hired by the university in 1956 as technical director of the on-campus Jorgensen Theater. As a member of the faculty, Ballard added puppetry to the graduate programs in 1962 and taught his first class in 1964. Since then, 400 original, UConn-student-created puppet productions have been presented and Ballard’s collections of puppetry-related material have grown to be one of the world’s finest.

“Thanks to Frank, the UConn Puppet Arts Program has been around for 50 years,” says Bell. “I came at puppetry from a different angle than Frank, who was steeped in the traditional marionette shows and art of puppetry of the midwest, where he grew up. By the time he was in his 20s, he’d created dozens of well-known puppet productions.”

Bell’s mission at the institute, besides preserving and sharing Ballard’s legacy, is to demonstrate how the definition of puppetry is expanding. “We’re interested in pointing out the traditions of hand puppets and marionettes but also looking at puppetry as a modern art form for adults, not just kids,” he says. “We want to let people know that the world of puppetry is vast, part of cultures all over the world. This is important in the 21st century with so much art being technology based, with virtual puppets and the use of digital imagery coming into their own, not to mention robotics.”

Still, whether the artistry is conveyed through hand puppets in a booth or via giant floating contraptions at outdoor pageants, Bell says “the dynamics are consistent.” “Any time humans turn to inanimate objects to tell stories, whether the objects are made of wood, rocks, or shadows—as it was thousands of years ago—an interesting dynamic is created,” he explains. “It is no longer a conversation between humans. We are directing our attention to this object and inspired to make our own connections. By definition, it’s uncanny or mystical. That engagement of the audience is what makes puppetry special.”

John Bell–puppeteer, Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry
Storrs, Connecticut
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Top image: John Bell. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The post Master of Puppets appeared first on Take Magazine.

“This is a story about the transformative power of art,” Vermont dancer Lida Winfield says as she glides around a stage that is bare, save for a pile of books that she circles and stands on. “This is a story about believing.”

When she graduated from high school, Winfield would not have been able to read those books. That’s because she is dyslexic, and fell behind in a school system that devalued children with learning disabilities. In her signature piece, In Search of Air: Growing up Dyslexic, the Vermont dancer employs modern dance and spoken word (both recorded and her own) to express the anger and frustration that she felt during those years. Music and movement match the content, from quick and sharp to slow and flowing, and finally joyful after she describes how a teacher taught her to learn kinesthetically, using movement to help her understand language.

Wearing a white sleeveless dress and waving a sheet of gauze behind which she sometimes disappears, Winfield mimics jumping rope in the playground and then extends her hands over her head to illustrate her words: the teacher made her wear a dunce cap. A male voice coming over a speaker suggests that this punishment reinforces dyslexics’ belief that if they fail, they see themselves as stupid.

Long Gone duet | Photo by Pauline Jennings

“The goal is to give a window into my experience,” the Bennington resident says, “and to show how important the arts are. It can also be about all who have had struggle and heartache in their life.”

Winfield has performed the piece on and off for the past six years at schools and conferences around the country and on tour in Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere. She also tours other pieces, including Long Gone, in which she and another dancer, Ellen Smith Ahern, explore how the dead live on in memory and imagination. She has performed on rooftops and in fields, woods, streets, beaches, and galleries, and often in other dancers’ projects.

“I was a kid who played outside, in the woods, and more than anything, that’s impacted the way I create,” Winfield says of growing up in a small Vermont town. She started dancing when she was two and acting when she was seven, joining a multi-generational dance/theater company at 14.

Photo courtesy the artist

Winfield finally learned to read at Landmark College, a Putney, Vermont, school for students with learning disabilities. There, a teacher taught her to learn by doing, such as spelling while doing jumping jacks or reading while moving, with the words written on big sheets on a wall. It wasn’t a straight trajectory, but afterward, Winfield got a bachelor’s degree at Goddard College, followed by a master’s degree in interdisciplinary arts. Her thesis topic was a prophetic one: “Using the Expressive Arts as a Healing Tool for Transformation.” Would that she had known that herself when she was a child, in need of her own healing.

Recession Special European Tour – Double Vision, Long Gone duet, Lida Winfield & Ellen Smith Ahern, 2011 | Photo by Marek Procházk

You can see Winfield on April 6 in the Faculty Dance Concert at Middlebury College, where she is a visiting lecturer in dance. She is scheduled to perform a duet with Maree ReMalia that is an excerpt of her new work, Imaginary. She will also perform In Search of Air in June at the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine, which will be followed by workshops on art, disability, and training for educators.

Lida Winfield – Dancer
Bennington, VT
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Top photo Recession Special European Tour – Double Vision, Long Gone duet, Lida Winfield & Ellen Smith Ahern, 2011 | Photo by Marek Procházk

The post Putting Words in Motion appeared first on Take Magazine.