Leave No Trace
a site-specific performance installation by JoAnna Mendl Shaw & The Equus Projects at Pillow Fort Arts Center
Sunday, October 18 · 1PM (rescheduled from September)
Sliding scale $10-$30, no one turned away for lack of funds. Please dress warmly, since seating is outdoors.
Created specifically for Pillow Fort Arts Center, Leave No Trace is a new site-specific performance and visual installation by JoAnna Mendl Shaw and The Equus Projects, developed with local dancers and artists.
Here in the watershed, laws protecting New York City’s water supply have shaped what—and how—land can be developed, creating ongoing tensions between preservation, economic development, and the realities of living and working on the land.
Movement, sound, and found materials transform the landscape of the Pillow Fort Dance Deck, with performers moving through the surrounding forest and hillside as audiences, seated on the deck, face outward toward the trees.
JoAnna’s years of interspecies work in rural communities have shaped her approach to movement and community engagement, developing practices of listening, scoring, and responding to people, place, and the more-than-human. Leave No Trace brings this way of working into the terrain of Pillow Fort, asking what our role is in an ever-evolving landscape.
Please RSVP in advance
Leave No Trace was developed during a week-long creative residency at Pillow Fort Arts Center. Alongside the residency, community members were welcomed to attend drop-in workshops rooted in JoAnna Mendl Shaw’s Physical Listening practice and get a glimpse of her creative process and how movement responds to site.
September 21–23, 2026
Drop-in movement workshops · 10AM–12PM
This project is made possible with funds from the NYS DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
