It opens in blue, a haunting, timeless, ethereal blue, the kind of bluethat reminds you of dreams. Center Stage amid all this blue light stand three dancers with their backs to the audience. They are of similar height, comparable build and dressed in matching costumes of baggy white pants and simple white tops. The music begins, a crackly, haunting ditty spoken (sung?) repeatedly:“Jesus’ blood never failed me. Yes, never failed me. Yes, Jesus’ blood neverfailed me. This one thing I know, for he loved me so.” The dancers move in rhythms and motions reminiscent of the tide coming in and going out. Then they turn and a flash of black — a small apron, a square of loincloth — jars the trance-like mood and the stainless impression. This hard edge draws the attention in just the same way the dancers’ precise movements emphasize their repetition. It is odd. It is awkward. It is also poetic.The 2011 season of Bard SummerScape has opened. The Tero Saarinen Company, the celebrated modern dance company from Finland that has won numerous international awards since its founding in 1996, gave four performances at Bard over the July 7-10 weekend, the only stop in the United States on its world tour. The company presented a triple bill of some of its most notable dances: “Westward, Ho!” their debut signature from 1996; “Wavelengths” (2000), a reworking of Ravel’s “Bolero”; “HUNT” (2002), a stunning solo conceived and danced by the troupe’s founder, Tero Saarinen, to Stravinsky’s“The Rite of Spring.” And an unexpected bonus: the award-winning lighting by Mikki Kunttu which really is every bit as spectacular as Saarinen’s choreography. “Westward, Ho!”is an odd little piece for three dancers. Built aroundrepetition and simple, stark movements typical of much modern dance of a certain genre, “Westward, Ho!” slowly develops a theme about individuality versusgroup sensibility or even dogma. The playbill describes the dance as anexploration of “friendship and betrayal – a stoic struggle for survival.”It is odd musically as well as visually for it is awkward even as it lullsyou or disturbs you. Saku Koistinen, Pekka Louhio and Heikki Vienola dance“Westward, Ho!” with an ease that belies the difficulty of Saarinen’schoreography. The prone inching across the floor, the expansive armmovements done in sync are easy examples to recall of demanding choreography that only looks easy. “Wavelengths,” however, is lyrical where “Westward, Ho!” is self-conscious. It is exciting in that it is a traditional pas de deux with a contemporary perspective on love and the struggle to maintain a sense of self. Thedancing by Henrikki Heikkilå and Sini Lånsivuori is beautiful and powerful. The use of shadows to intensify and distort is equally effective. Thelighting moves from cool, neutral white to a black background to a richorange, an interesting palette for the drawing close and pushing away ofattraction. Costumes by Erika Turenen are simple, Continued from page 10loose, and spare in bland colors. The backless cut of Turenen’s top and the merciless spotlight on the dancer’s sinewy back underscore her strength and seeming delicacy. It is sensual and oddly modern. The best piece out of an evening of strong, stunning dance, however, wasSaarinen’s solo performance in “HUNT.” While Saarinen typically uses light and shadow the way others use set and costume, this is pushed to extremes in “HUNT” as Saarinen uses his own body as a canvas for an internal light show as well as strobe lights to create a host of images and effects that have everything to do with lift and loft as much as a frenzied beating of wings,or a gasping breath for life. The 45-minute solo is visually astonishing and conceptually beautiful. It gathers radically different elements and weaves them together to present this final work of physicality and vision. In many ways, Tero Saarinen at SummerScape was “classic Bard,” an evening of the excellent as well as the esoteric. If the gift of dance is in the way, its sheer physicality can take audiences to unexpected places. The TeroSaarinen Company delivered twofold: first, in the way it stretches expectations of dance; and finally, in the stunning way it takes its audience to new places.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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