BRIDGMAN|PACKER RESIDENCY
DANCE & MEDIA STORYTELLING
A Multidisciplinary Inquiry: Movement, Media, & Milltown Memory
THE CONCEPT & COLLABORATIONS:
The Adams Theater serves as a living laboratory for this residency, a project focused on the documented voices and industrial legacy of the Northern Berkshires. This inquiry is driven by a unique collaboration between Bridgman|Packer Dance, Williams College faculty and students, and the Adams Historical Society.
In conjunction with Bridgman|Packer's stage performances of Ghost Factory and Under the Skin, we are presenting the immersive installation, Places With Hidden Stories. This work centers on the recorded testimony of former mill workers, gathered through localized interviews conducted by Williams College students. By bridging award-winning choreography with localized oral history, the residency transforms the theater into an active archive for the community's labor history.
THE INSTALLATION: PLACES WITH HIDDEN STORIES
September 18 to October 4, 2026
Presented in our lobby gallery, this installation serves as the residency’s civic anchor. Utilizing the theater’s spatial vastness as a canvas, the exhibit juxtaposes captured words and video interviews with archival imagery and physical artifacts.
This media storytelling project turns our space into a bridge between the street and the stage, allowing the mill community to exist in direct dialogue with contemporary performance.
The Performance: A Double Feature
September 19, 2026, at 7:30 PM
Directed and Performed by Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer
Ghost Factory: Inspired by the vast, deserted factory buildings of Johnson City, New York, Ghost Factory reveals how architecture can hold a town’s human stories hidden within its walls. In this work, the duet form is reimagined as the dancers' live performance is integrated with haunting video imagery of industrial spaces, populating the stage with the humanity that once filled these vast landscapes.
Under the Skin: The stage becomes magically populated as Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer interchange with their ever-multiplying virtual selves. Using their bodies and costumes as projection screens, the performers redefine identity and reveal psychological depths in real-time. Set to a pulsing, jazz-inflected score by Ken Field, the work is a visceral study of the alchemy between the live and the virtual.
Video installation Places with Hidden History in Tempa, Florida, where Bridgman|Packer Dance collaborated with Hillsborough Community College Ybor City Campus students