Early in October, as part our 50th anniversary celebration this year, ET Projects’ newest collaborative performance event, Ridgeline, brought community and creativity together through performance, experiential art, and environmental activism in two extraordinary nights at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation’s Rokeby Airstrip in Upperville.
On Saturday, Oct. 1, Ridgeline was the signature highlight of PEC’s 50th Anniversary Farm-to-Table Dinner, incorporating 600 guests and volunteers into a mesmerizing art experience accompanied by the live music of multi-Grammy award nominee Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen. The next evening, Ridgeline became a community collaboration carried out by several hundred local schoolchildren and their families.
Titled Ridgeline for its location at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the interactive performances opened with a moving solo by Orange County resident and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre alumna Demetia Hopkins, and then turned participants into artists, dancers, choreographers, neighbors and friends.
As each person carried LED-lit umbrellas with canopies showcasing images inspired by regional endangered flora, these gatherings became a dance of light and, from afar, a vibrant field of plants and flowers swelling and swaying with grace and joy at sunset.
This letter appeared in The Piedmont Environmental Council’s member newsletter, The Piedmont View. If you’d like to become a PEC member or renew your membership, please visit pecva.org/join.