Three years ago, Elizabeth Kurylo, a choreographer living in Corinth, launched The Junction Dance Festival, a celebration of dance in the Twin States. What started as a three day event in White River Junction has been steadily gaining steam over the past few years.

This season’s program runs from July 12 through July 20 and includes a week’s worth of public workshops and performances in partnership with venues across White River Junction, Lebanon, Norwich, and, for the first time, Barre, Vt.

“We’ve gained a lot of interest from dancers and then from instructors,” Kurylo said in a Monday interview.

That interest is understandable, as The Junction Dance Festival is one of the only events of its kind in Vermont and New Hampshire.

“Hopefully, we’re going to increase the awareness that dance is around, and it’s not just in New York City and it’s not just in Boston,” Kurylo said. 

Among her goals for the festival, Kurylo hopes to encourage audiences “to appreciate the art of dance” and help “the public community to access dance,” she said.

Starting July 12, free workshops covering a diverse range of styles such as jazz, ballet, baroque, African and Indian dance will be scheduled throughout the festival.

And participants of all ages and abilities are encouraged to take part in the public workshops, which include a dance therapy event for seniors on July 17 at the Aging Resource Center at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

The festival also will showcase a number of performances from area dance groups such as Avant Vermont Dance, which will perform the original, family-friendly ballet “Thumbelina” on the Norwich green on July 12. The Southern Vermont company performed the piece at last year’s festival and has since brought the show to outdoor venues across Vermont.

On July 14 at Briggs Opera House, choreographer and educator Rachel Bernsen will perform an improvisational piece entitled “Heft” alongside composer and viola player, Mac Waters. The show, a double-bill with Burlington-based dance collective, soft rocks, derives inspiration from Bernsen’s experience as a practitioner of Alexander Technique, a kind of movement therapy that helps participants overcome long-term discomfort and prioritizes minimal physical exertion. 

The piece is “kind of building on this idea that we think our senses are right, but we’re really so driven by habitual responses to things,” said Bernsen in an interview at her studio in the Tip Top Media Building. 

Improvisation is Bernsen and Waters’ chosen tool to crack that habit life open, and get at a more mindful kind of movement, or at least try to. 

“Even within improvisation, it’s easy to fall back on habitual ways of dancing or making sound or making music…,” Bernsen said. “(The performance) is really kind of going deeper to try to figure out how to stay present and being open to not knowing.” 

The next day, Bernsen will lead the workshop “Alexander Technique: A critical practice for movement artists,” which is geared toward practicing dancers as well as anyone who is curious about the methodology.

The week’s festivities will wrap up on July 20 with a performance by Vermont Dance Alliance resident artist Michael Bodel and members of ChoreoLab, the festival’s residency program.

The dance is an excerpt from a larger project called “The Institute for Folding,” which Bodel has been at work on over the past year. The piece is an exploration of human curiosity and abandonment that has dancers negotiating slabs of cardboard of various sizes.

Like many of the performances at The Junction Dance Festival, the piece is an opportunity for audiences to experience original and experimental work that might otherwise slip below their radar.

The Junction Dance Festival runs from July 12 - 20. Workshops are free and open to the public. For tickets to performances ($0-$25) and more information, visit junctiondancefestival.org.

Silly, goofy pots

For Brooklyn-based ceramicist Dave Zackin, there are two kinds of artists: those who are skilled at drawing from life, and those whose work transmutes real life into symbolic language.

Zackin identifies more with the second camp. His ceramics, which will be on view at a solo exhibition at Kishka Gallery & Library in White River Junction starting next Friday, are often embellished with googly-eyed faces, skinny protruding arms and wry phrases that would fit in on a cartoon strip.

“I am still hungry” reads the text on a lampshade whose base — a wide-eyed gremlin — crams a spoon into its gaping mouth. 

Originally from Newton, Mass., Zackin studied animation at Rhode Island School of Design, which is where he met Ben Finer, who runs Kishka.

Zackin doesn’t care much for using a pottery wheel, instead, he modifies discarded pots that are left lying around at the communal studio he’s part of near Prospect Park in Brooklyn. “I really like that instead of starting with a blank canvas, I’m working against something,” he said in a phone interview.

When coming up with new ideas, Zackin lets “the dumb part of my brain take over,” he said. On one of his vases, an impish man cradles an overflowing bowl of noodles with his thick fingers. Stray bits of pasta stick to his arms and face, while he arches his brows and looks sheepishly to his left, as if acknowledging the mess he’s made.

Tucked into a spot on Gates Street, Kishka’s gallery comprises a small square room that Zackin intends to cram with pots, including the tiled floor. “I don’t like any empty space,” he said. “I want it to be immersive.”

“Cheap for Fine Art, Expensive for Dishes” will be on view at Kishka Gallery & Library in White River Junction from July 11 through Sept. 20. For more information, visit the the gallery’s Instagram page @kishka.vt.  

Shake(r) to some music

There’s not much in the way of arts-based entertainment this weekend, given the upcoming Fourth of July festivities. But next Wednesday, the Enfield Shaker Museum will host the second installment of its Outdoor Summer Concert Series, which takes place almost every week through Aug. 13.

Located on the lawn of Stone Machine Shop, Wednesday’s free event includes live entertainment by Americana and folk group, Never Too Late.

Food trucks will be open from 6 p.m. for a 7 p.m. start time. Concert-goers are encouraged to bring lawn chairs. For more information, visit shakermuseum.org.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.