Sawdust Palace Suite (2010)

Susan Marshall’s Sawdust Palace Suite mixes elements of burlesque, cabaret and vaudeville to create a dance that is at once outrageous, touching and boldly theatrical. Hedwig Dances’ collaboration with Susan Marshall’s company developed from a composition workshop that Executive Director Phil Reynolds and his staff set up between our two companies last year.
So, it is especially fitting that we are premiering Sawdust Palace Suite at The Dance Center.

In 2007 Susan Marshall & Company was jointly commissioned by Bard College’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in Maryland to create a new work to premier in Bard’s Spiegeltent. Spiegeltents are legendary tent cabarets that toured European festival in the early 20th century and are sometimes found on the grounds of art festivals such as Bard’s.

For the occasion Marshall & Company created Sawdust Palace, a ninety minute collection of twenty dances, which was performed in the round on an elevated circular stage inside the tent. The suite performed in this program, a selection of dances from that evening, is presented in an “unplugged” style without the trappings of platform and tent and reconfigured for performance on an intimate stage.

Susan Marshall has created over 30 dances in collaboration with the dancers in Susan Marshall and Company including Cloudless, One and Only You, The Most Dangerous Room in the House, Spectators at an Event, Fields of View, Arms, Interior with Seven Figures, Kiss. Marshall has also created dances for the Lyon Opera Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Boston Ballet and Montreal Danse.