By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
The inspiration gained from reading a book about fly fishing can spur much action. Two books even more. Just ask Mark Neikirk, who heads Northern Kentucky University’s Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. After reading, he wondered… how about capturing the elegance of the sport of fly fishing and putting it on stage? It would happen as he found amazing collaborators.
“In 2021, John Maclean’s book, Home Waters: Chronicle of Family and a River, was published and I read it immediately,” said Mark. “I was a longtime fan of his father’s (Norman Maclean) book, A River Runs through It, which seemed to me to be prose written as poetry. John’s book had its own beauty. And I wondered if he might come to NKU for the literary symposium, and he agreed to do so.”
With that achieved, how could Mark take John Maclean’s reading and promote an even more meaningful student and faculty experience?
Piggybacking on a previous lecture the Center presented using dance to interpret the words, Mark broached the idea to NKU’s dance faculty of using Home Waters as background material for a presentation. The suggestion hit home with dynamic dance instructor Teresa VanDenend Sorge, and she quickly developed a class for the NKU Fall 2022 session, starting in September. Included with her personal broad resume, she had previously been associated with the Koresh Kids Dance program, in Philadelphia, which she started in 2008, and she currently is involved with a “dance artist showcase” focusing on the choreographic process, called Synergy Series.
Teresa talked about the process used in her class at NKU. “The students were assigned to read the book, Home Waters, by John Maclean and watch the movie, A River Runs through It. We read the book in chapter chunks and with each ‘unit’ the students came to our rehearsal with quotes that they found meaningful. In rehearsal, we sat in a circle and shared which quotes stood out to them and why the quote was meaningful.”
Those discussions were crucial to getting to where they wanted to be—presenting an enlightening performance revolving around fly fishing.
“We built dance phrases inspired by the quotes and then weaved these dance phrases into longer sections of choreography which ultimately became the dance,” Teresa continued. “The text in Home Waters was a particular rhythm as you read it, and we worked to find that rhythm in our bodies.”
Teresa also noted that another key part of the class project was working with Mike Arnold, a local fly-casting instructor. “Mike came to our rehearsal and taught us some basic techniques of fly fishing, including a four-count cast,” she explained. “After working with Mike, it became clear that we should invite him to be in the dance as well. The original text has many themes, including family and multi-generational memory and the inclusion of Mike seemed perfect.” Also included were Teresa’s husband, Jim, and their seven-year-old daughter, Josephine, to help embody the multi-generational themes.
She also commended NKU senior music composition student Peter Lefkovitz, who wrote the music for the performance. “Peter came to each rehearsal and observed the creation of the dance and then came back each rehearsal with parts of what would become his original composition, also entitled Home Waters Run Deep.” She also praised the student who designed the lights and the student musicians who created the sound, along with the NKU students who worked on the filming and editing. She called the project a “brilliant embodiment” of the Center mission.
John Maclean supplied a nice touch to the stage performance video as well as doing his regular reading at the literary symposium. “In the piece, we used some of the quotes from the book as text in our sound score,” said Teresa. “When John Maclean heard this, he graciously offered to read the quotes himself. So, after our first show he recorded the quotes for us, and the sound score now includes his voice.”
The premiere performance of Home Waters Run Deep occurred on October 27, right before John Maclean spoke about his book at the Cincinnati Art Museum, part of the NKU Center Symposium. The actual Home Waters Run Deep video was filmed a few months later at the Corbett Theatre on December 14 (shown here): Home Waters Run Deep.
On March 4, the production was shown in conjunction with Teresa’s Master of Fine Arts thesis concert. Most recently, April 28-30, it was performed as part of Dance ’23, the dance mainstage concert for the NKU School of the Arts.
For the future, Teresa doesn’t plan to follow the same script with this exact production, “because if new people dance it, it will have a new meaning,” she said. “I would love to engage in a similar process about fly fishing, or with this book, with a new group of people but the dance would change.”
Mark Neikirk, buoyed by the unique production, looks optimistically for similar initiatives for the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement.
“I’ll certainly be looking for more ways to include dance, and more broadly, the humanities in our community engagement programming,” he said. “And meanwhile, I’m hopeful that every student involved in the project will look back on it for years to come as seminal in their learning to interpret unfamiliar but interesting themes through art.”
