ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
The Erie Canal Bicentennial Project is a new dance for eight dancers commemorating the 2025 bicentennial of the iconic New York State waterway.
The story of the canal is a story of movement. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was the first American waterway to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. Its construction was considered the first and greatest American feat of engineering. It was picked, shoveled, and dug by brute force, primarily by poor Irish immigrant laborers, as well as free African Americans from the south, and local farmers. Water eventually burst through it and carried thousands of Americans traveling westward, at the same time displacing Native American communities whose land it ripped through.
The canal triggered dramatic cultural change. Abolition, utopianism, and women’s rights all flourished along the canal. Frederick Douglass lived in Rochester and from there published his abolitionist newspaper The North Star; the first women’s rights convention was held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, between Syracuse and Rochester.
Above all, the canal meant an explosion of motion – something that only dance is aptly positioned to explore.
This new dance is influenced by the movement inherent to the canal: the surveying of land, digging of land, physical construction, and the movement of water and boats, all within a modern and postmodern dance sensibility with Irish dance influences. It will feature a new score of music inspired by canal folk songs of the 19th and 20th centuries, with the intention of reflecting on the legacy of the canal—both its good and its bad parts—through the canal’s own medium, movement.
CREATIVE TEAM
Cecilia Whalen—Choreographer
Diego Gómez—Dancer
Tara Kuhl—Irish Step Dancer
Kai McCoy—Dancer
Rebecca Pelleri—Dancer
Natasha Schmid—Dancer
Ghislaine van den Heuvel—Dancer
Priscilla Vasquez—Dancer
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Originally from North Carolina, Cecilia Whalen is an NYC-based dancer, choreographer, and writer. She is a graduate of the Martha Graham School and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Whalen has performed professionally with the Martha Graham Center, the Merce Cunningham Trust, Jonah Bokaer Choreography, and Liz Gerring Dance Company. Her choreography has been performed at numerous diverse venues around New York City, including The Tank, Dixon Place, the Martha Graham Studio Theater, the Spark Theatre Festival, and the Roosevelt Island Visual Arts Association Gallery. In 2024, she was invited to present work as Movement Migration Dance Company’s first emerging choreographer in residence in Charlotte, where she presented original work alongside a cohort of Martha Graham and José Limón company veterans and led master classes for the community and students at UNC Charlotte. In 2024, Whalen presented scholarly writing about her choreography, “5 by e.e. cummings,” at the Louisville Conference on Literature and was invited to present this piece at the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival at the University of New Hampshire.
Whalen’s work is inspired by a wide range of interests, including literature, visual art, and a diverse array of music. Her extensive writing can be found in publications such as Dance Magazine, Commonweal Magazine, and Fjord Review.