Wave Hill Garden, NYC
Sponsored by Dancing in the Streets for Dances at Wave Hill

Waiting had its seeds in my experience in Croatia, where I created Odakle Ste with Bosnian Muslim refugees. After returning to New York, I wanted to further explore through performance the state of limbo people can find themselves in when they have lost a connection to their past and have no vision of their future. I was interested in the way this sense of personal dislocation arises not only from external events such as war, but also from inner psychological conflict. The result was a piece created for Dances at Wave Hill, in which an enclave of refugees—stuck in a camp—spoke of their lives arrested by war, while two New Yorkers—invoking characters from Waiting for Godot—wandered through the lush environment, struggling with their neurotic, self-imposed paralysis. The piece's themes found their fullest expression in the beautiful, haunting movements of dancers in white. Andy Teirstein's music was inspired by the folk music he researched in Eastern Europe, played on accordion, violin, voice and other instruments.

DIRECTED AND CHOREOGRAPHED by Sabrina Peck | TEXT by Sabrina Peck based on her interviews with Bosnian Muslim refugees in Croatia; additional inspiration from Beckett's Waiting for Godot | COMPOSED by Andy Teirstein | WITH: dancers and former refugees: Hsiu-ping Chang, Jennifer Chin, Naaz Hosseini, Columbine Lacher, Carine Montbertrand, Mollie Mungan, Azra Osmanovic, Kate Pagliasotti, Holley Stewart, Irma St. Paule and Jennifer Tsukayama