“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
Website
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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.

This article originally ran in our October 2015 print edition.

Texans have a name for expats from Massachusetts, and it ain’t Masshole. If you make the pilgrimage from New England to the Lone Star State, you’re a carpetbagger the second you cross the border, and you’ll remain one until you leave for greener pastures. Trust me, I’ve been lugging this baggage around for the past 15 years.

When my wife (then lady friend) and I migrated, I had ideas about Texas. I’d read all of Cormac McCarthy. I listened, drank, and wept to Springsteen’s Ghost of Tom Joad religiously. I once passed the flaming husk of an 18-wheeler on I-10 near Sonora at 3:00 a.m. on the return leg of a 20-day, cross-country drive.

In short, I thought I understood Texas. So we jumped into Crusher, my rusty blue ’88 Chevy Blazer; popped a Friends of Dean Martinez cassette into the deck; and headed southwest, stopping in Memphis to sleep through Y2K eve and TCB at Graceland.

Once in Austin, I looked for adventures. My expat buddy Tim and I attended a rattlesnake rustling competition, an event that yielded a great koozie and a glimpse into the socioeconomic drivers that spur folks to hook big ol’ snakes into a burlap sack for pennies. Really, we were outsiders pretending to be outlaws.

Later, my lady friend and I drove to Palestine (Pal-uhs-TEEN) to watch Robbie Knievel jump a steam train. Because Crusher had out-of-state plates and I was speeding, a trooper pulled us over in Jewett. As he swaggered toward us with his campaign hat, mirrored shades, and mouthful of chaw, we began to sweat bullets.

Obliging the slow twirls of his index finger, I rolled down my window.

“What’re you doin’ so far from Massatoosits, boy?”

“Taking my lady friend to see Robbie Knievel jump a steam train, sir.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Just slow it down, and tell ol’ Robbie I said hi.”

Then he drove away.

It was THE BEST.

We made it to Palestine in time to trek across fields and over barbed wire, alongside families with strollers, toward the locomotive pyre where Evel’s son made history as “Detroit Rock City” reverberated over the swale.

As the thrill of living in Texas began to fade, we settled into life in Austin. Sure, the nice self-mutilating tenants at our apartment complex occasionally dangled by their nipples from the mimosa tree in the courtyard. But the novelty wore off quickly; so we went about the tasks of making friends, establishing routines, and finishing our undergraduate degrees.

Here’s a fun fact I learned in my studies: Texas has had eight constitutions. The eighth went into effect during the Reconstruction to protect the state from carpetbaggers (I’m paraphrasing my professor here). Texas is determined to stay true to its maverick identity, even if much of that identity was stolen from Mexico. I suppose that’s a big part of what makes Texas so quintessentially American.

That said, Texas confounds me; despite its many flaws, it’s hard to resist its wily charms. I never thought we’d plant roots, but we’re still here because it feels like home. We’ve earned degrees here. We’ve made our fair share of lifelong friends here. Our family, careers, home. . . they’re all here. But while our little girl is a native Texan and Austinite, it’s likely we won’t raise her here. This state is just too damn red for us. Even so, thanks to the pilgrimage we made at the turn of the century, she’ll always have a place in Texas to unpack her bags and hang her hat.

Top illustration by Rob Kimmel.

The post Notes From An Expat: Pack Your Bags, Son appeared first on Take Magazine.