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In celebration of the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, New York City dancer and choreographer Cecilia Whalen presents an original performance to commemorate the canal’s many social, political and geographical significances.   

  The story of the Erie Canal is a story of movement. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was the first American waterway to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. Its construction was considered the first and greatest American feat of engineering. It was picked, shoveled, and dug by brute force, primarily by poor Irish immigrant laborers, as well as free African Americans from the south and local farmers. Water eventually burst through it and carried thousands of Americans travelling westward, at the same time displacing Native American communities whose land it ripped through.   

The canal triggered dramatic cultural change. Abolition, utopianism, and women’s rights all flourished along the canal. Above all, the canal meant an explosion of motion – something that only dance is aptly positioned to explore.  

This dance piece is inspired by the movement that is inherent to the canal, including surveying of the land, clearing of the land, digging of the land, releasing of the water, and towing of boats. The movement is stylized, with a modern and postmodern sensibility as well as influences from Irish step dance. The music includes new arrangements for American folk instruments of canal songs from the 19th and 20th centuries, including the famous “Low Bridge Song.”