Back to the Garden

BFA actors Grace Isaacs, from left, Lux McCastle Stewart, and Ellen Valencia with a March2RUGardens participant. The students performed Water, Air, and Land, written by Head of Dramaturgy Christopher Cartmill, with costumes by Head of Costume Design Valerie Ramshur.

ARTS-INFLECTED MARCH FOR “SPATIAL JUSTICE” HIGHLIGHTS ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES AT RUTGERS GARDENS

On September 25, Mason Gross School of the Arts and the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences co-hosted a two-mile walk winding from Douglass Campus through Cook Farm to Rutgers Gardens. The walk, known as March2RUGardens, was meant to underscore the history of the land on which the university is built and to highlight the need for equal access to the 180 acres of recreational space contained in the botanic gardens, situated off Ryders Lane in New Brunswick. The gardens are surrounded by highway, and with no sidewalks, bike paths, or direct bus access, they remain safely accessible only by car.

The event, which featured dance, music, theater, and visual arts interventions along the way, was a project of the AIR (Arts Integration Research) Collaborative and was organized by faculty Anette Freytag, a professor of landscape architecture, along with Julia M. Ritter, an alum and faculty member in our Dance Department.

“The pandemic underscored the importance of exercise and access to green spaces for everyone,” says Ritter, who has long worked in the arena of immersive dance integrated with the everyday, creating performances that unfold in nontraditional spaces. “This has been especially true for dancers given we could not train or create safely indoors…. Rutgers Gardens was the site for dozens of dance films made by Mason Gross dancers between March 2020 and May 2021. The gardens became key to continuing our artistic work during a challenging period.”

During the walk, participants encountered a movement choir, as well as live music and storytelling and an introduction to the famed Fluxus art movement, among other activities. In the Cow Tunnel beneath Route 1, Rutgers University Voorhees Choir performed an immersive sound score from faculty Scott Ordway. Along the way, walkers encountered students’ sound and landscape installations, as well as fanfare from the Marching Scarlet Knights and various short talks about campus land.

“I’m channeling playwright Anton Chekov, who stated, ‘Art doesn't have to solve problems, it only has to formulate them correctly,’” Ritter says of the inspiration for the march.

The march was a reminder, she adds, that the arts can serve as an effective tool of activism---perhaps more effective, in fact, than any stump speech.

“The march was offered to the community as an intervention and means by which to foster awareness of the problems related to equity, access, and connectivity on campus,” Ritter says. “I believe such concerns would be best understood when participants could see, feel, and know them more fully through their personal, embodied experiences.”

Participating MGSA faculty, staff, and students included: Valerie Ramshur, Patrick Stettner, Tamara Tinawi, Alessandra Williams, Brandon Williams, Todd Nichols, Julia Baumanis, Steven Kemper, Christopher Cartmill, Gerry Beegan, Elizabeth Calderone, Grace Isaacs, Lux McCastle Stewart, Ellen Valencia, Jasmine Agme, Elena Yasin, Julia Ramirez, Lyle Mcleod, Nathalye Abreu, Lauren Goldman, Joshua Friedman, Caitlyn Ostrowski, Jon Balagtas, Anne McPherson, Ria Monga, Amee Pollack, Capri Leone, John Evans, Yogini Borgaonkar, Gray Burdick, Sophia Hoyt, and Dean Jason Geary.

View a video about the march at go.rutgers.edu/mgsamag22