I wonder if she felt the valley rise to envelop her, as I do

Though she lives in Roanoke, Va., Janice Lancaster has been connected to Western North Carolina through past projects with BMCM+AC.
      In 2009, she and husband Adam Larsen produced Black Whole, a multimedia dance performance that took place at the Food Lion Skate Park. Video projection transformed the skate park into an otherworldly portal, and audiences were transfixed by the dancers’ interactions with webs of light rays.

This year, Lancaster will perform intermittently with Kathleen Hahn and Claire Elizabeth Barratt inside a 6-foot-diameter geodesic dome, developed by Gene Felice and Lou Gargiulo, that will float on Lake Eden. This is the first time a geodesic dome has been created on the campus of BMC since Buckminster Fuller’s initial attempts in 1948 and 1949.

The new dome’s creation involved help from a variety of people, including seamstress R. Brooke Priddy, who showed Felice how to sew four-way stretch spandex around the structure. Projections by Megan McKissack and sound by Kima Moore will infuse the installation.

“The elements of our project are striking — luminescent floating dome under moonlight, reflected on a body of water that is surrounded by rolling hills and forests,” writes Lancaster in an e-mail. “I like imagining the students at BMC connecting with the land. I recently saw rare archival footage of Katherine Litz improvising among those trees, responding to shadows and sunlight. I wonder if she felt the valley rise to envelop her as I do when on the old campus. It's beautiful.”