As part of the month-long project Ziedo?d?rza st?sti which is part of the Riga 2014 program in the nearby neighborhood park, choreographers Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek were working with students from the Latvian Culture College dance program and one student musician to create “Stories from the Park” to be performed 23 May at 18:00 on the benches and lawn near the water fountain. The park is called Ziedo?d?rzs (Spring Garden) and it is located at the intersection of A.?aka St.and Artil?rijas St.in Riga, Latvia.

Choreographers provided the dancers with stories about the park from past events’ brochures and instructed them to each choose 12 words that spoke to them. From these words, each dancer then were given additional choreographic prompts to create phrases of movement. Additionally, the dancers wrote three verses based in the rhythmic structure of the traditional dainas in Latvian, Russian and/or English. The performance will include both movement and spoken word inspired from descriptions of what the park has meant in local residents’ lives. Accompaniment will be live electric guitar with manipulated and edited musique concrète electronic score recorded while strolling through the park.

Here’s a link to the website of events: http://ziedondarzs.lv/?page_id=593.