Plant A Shoe, Join A Movement: Dance Truck’s Shoe-Planting Party at Garden*Hood

By Amy Foster
We’ve all been encouraged at one time or another to imagine what it would be like to walk in someone else’s shoes.  This summer Dance Truck and Garden*Hood take it one step further:  we’re encouraging you to set roots in someone else’s shoes!
In support of Dance Truck’s upcoming performance of Blake Beckham’s PLOT, Garden*Hood is hosting a shoe-planting extravaganza on Saturday, July 16 from 10:00am until 3:00pm.  Garden*Hood will provide the shoes, soil, plants, water, and a festive atmosphere as you turn the lost sole of your choice into a planter worthy of the spotlight.  And, in fact, it will become a star:  all shoes planted during the July 16 event will take the stage with the dancers of PLOT.  After their bout of fame (at the Goat Farm over the weekend of July 28-31), sponsored shoes will be yours to take home.
Plants and shoes provide the perfect metaphor for the natural relationship between Garden*Hood and Dance Truck.  Both entities are committed to growing a movement of creativity and beauty.  Garden*Hood – with its mission to Plant Atlanta! – knows that plants thrive in curious, creative, and cooperative homes and communities.  By providing unique plants and an informed, helpful, fun-loving staff, Garden*Hood helps people step into appreciation of the expressive world of plants.
Likewise, Dance Truck operates on the belief that art can take root in any place at any moment and impresses on us how bringing the arts outside allows any and every environment to become a stage for sharing inspired and delightful performance.  Dance Truck and Garden*Hood exist largely because of the innate desire in all of us to acknowledge and explore the interconnections between nature and place and revel in their continuous creative growth and evolution.
Dance Truck, which has hosted two performances at Garden*Hood, is venturing into a new production orchestrated by performance artist Blake Beckham.  PLOT, “inspired by a universe of wonder within a plot of earth,” explores the metaphors of germination, growth, decay, seasons, and the passage of time.  The piece is place-specific and will incorporate the unique attributes of the former cotton mill now known as The Goat Farm.  The shoes-turned-planters reveal some of the ideas that Beckham upholds while choreographing.  In her words, “I am in awe that every day the world practices its habit of rotation while we persist in our one-foot-in-front-of-the-othering. There’s hopefulness in taking in the world through the lens of movement and its relentless, astonishing impermanence.”
Come be part of the movement. Plant a shoe and honor the impermanence of life and art and the joyful expression of creativity.
Details:
The Shoe-Planting Party takes place at Garden*Hood on Saturday, July 16 from 10:00am to 3:00pm. Participants contribute a $10 donation to sponsor a shoe for the performance.  This gets you the shoe, the plants, and the soil to create your masterpiece and guarantees its return to your hands after the show.  The planting party is open to creative types of all ages! We’ve got 200 shoes to plant, so bring a friend. Kindly RSVP to Garden*Hood manager Kacey Cloues at kacey@gardenhoodatlanta.com or 404-880-9848.
PLOT is performed the weekend of July 28-31 at The Goat Farm, 1200 Foster Road. For more information, visit www.bdancing.com or www.dancetruck.org.