Dancing our
stories and questions
By Sandy Fails
Mark Ewing
The aesthetics and history of the Gronk inspired Sasha Chudacoff’s ‘apocalyptic’ dancefilm “Mine.” Since moving to Crested Butte eight years ago, dancer Sasha Chudacoff has been fascinated by the Gronk, the nicknamed concrete structure that a century ago was part of a tipple from the Pershing Mine near Peanut Lake. Her fascination eventually led to her eightminute dancefilm called “Mine,” which this year has been viewed at film festivals around the country. “From the beginning I was inspired by the structure – the aesthetics, the architecture of the space,” Sasha said of the Gronk. She learned about its history through cultural story-keeper Marcie Telander, the Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum and gatherings of oldtimers. “The unique mythology of the valley was offered to me through Marcie,” Sasha said. “I sat with her for hours, listening to stories.” The Pershing’s mine shafts, Sasha heard, were so cramped that only the small, young men could crawl deep into the hillside. There they chipped at the earth so the ore fell onto cloth laid on the ground, then as a group they pulled the laden cloth back out of the shaft. “I love to interpret things through my body,” Sasha said. So, with permission from the agreeable owners of the Gronk property, she began spending time there “to envision the spirit of the place… the suffering, the joking around that went on there. That energy is really juicy to me.” 22
The Gronk, formerly part of the Pershing mine complex.
As a low-residency graduate student in interdisciplinary arts and education through Goddard University, Sasha also learned about the emerging genre of dancefilm. “Dance is ephemeral because it happens live,” she said. “Dancefilm is a merging of film and dance where the camera is part of the choreography.” While teaching ballet, jazz, hiphop and aerial dance through the Crested Butte School of Dance and working on other independent projects, Sasha envisioned moving images she could weave together