During the fall semester’s first Faculty Lunch Talk Series event on Sept. 23, Jay Hoggard ’76, professor of music, and Nicole Stanton, provost, professor of dance, and senior vice president for academic affairs, presented a talk titled “Storied Places: A Collaborative Exploration of Migration and Memory” on Zoom. Hoggard and Stanton discussed their ongoing “Storied Places” project, which was performed in the Center for the Arts Theater in February 2020.“Storied Places” initially explored the stories of how the two collaborators’ own families migrated from the south to the north. In time, the project evolved into science-fiction, where the characters envisioned themself in the future.Stanton, a choreographer with a scholarly interest in the histories of the African Diaspora, and Hoggard, a vibraphonist and composer, began their artistic collaboration in 2014. “I’m very interested in the idea of collaboration as a composition practice, one that decenters a single voice and tries to create a space where multiple voices, multiple bodies, and multiple stories can thrive and exist in a community,” Stanton said.Hoggard, who graduated from Wesleyan’s World Music program in 1976, has recorded more than 20 CDs as a leader and more than 50 as a collaborator. He’s served as director of the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra for more than 25 years. As a composer, Hoggard said Stanton’s arrangements “really challenged me to think outside the box.” In most productions, very specific lyrics are tied to the emotions of a particular scene, “whereas, working with Nicole, there’s something much more subtle than that. It’s performance art. There’s a symbolic part of modern and post-modern conceptions of choreography, dance, and movement, so … it was an expansion [for me] in terms of how to translate that into sound, or fragments of sound, as opposed to structured pieces. It was more of a texture. Working with the Dance Department at Wesleyan and seeing the dancers, I got a better understanding of dance at Wes.”All performers and musicians affiliated with “Storied Places” are Wesleyan faculty, alumni, or community members, and/or independent artists from New York, Boston, and New Jersey. They work collaboratively with one another throughout the entire performance process. “It’s not about me creating material and asking all the other bodies in the room to be exactly like my body,” Stanton said. “We’re all asking one another to try on our physical perspective … so in that we are engaging our experience. We take our histories and expand them and put them into a context by learning and moving with other people, with other bodies.”Wesleyan President Michael Roth ’78, top left, hosted the webinar and introduced Stanton and Hoggard. The Faculty Luncheon Series normally takes place at Daniel Family Commons over the lunch hour, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was hosted online.
Olivia Drake
![Hoggard, who graduated from Wesleyan's World Music program in 1976, has recorded more than 20 CDs as a leader and more than 50 as a collaborator. He's served as director of the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra for more than 25 years. As a composer, Hoggard said Stanton's arrangements "really challenged to think outside the box." In most productions, very specific lyrics are tied to the emotions of a particular scene, "whereas, working with Nicole, there's something much more subtle than that. It's performance art. There's a symbolic part of modern and post-modern conceptions of choreography, dance, and movement, so ... it was an expansion [for me] in terms of how how to translate that into sound, or fragments of sound as opposed to structured pieces. It was more of a texture. Working with the Dance Department at Wesleyan and seeing the dancers, I got a better understanding of dance at Wes."](https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/files/2020/09/storiedplaces5.jpg)
Mike Mavredakis
Jeff Harder