Tomorrow the wait will be over. Mary Oslund will unveil her newest work as part of the White Bird Uncaged Series at Lincoln Hall, and Paul and I could not be more excited.

This represents White Bird's 28th commission, and the second time we have commissioned Mary. The first time was back in January 2004, when she created "Volant." Some of you may recall that program which included a variety of work by Mary, and certainly we were delighted to present Mary for the first time with a cast of some of Portland's outstanding dancers.

We believe that Mary is one of the strongest choreographers not only from our region but from the States. When we were developing our focus on American Women Choreographers Past, Present and Future, more than a year ago, there was no question that Mary belonged in the group that included Martha Graham and  Lucinda Childs, two of the revolutionary figures in American modern dance. We asked Mary if she would create a major work for us, to be commissioned by White Bird, and we were thrilled that she said yes.

Mary is an important choreographer for many different reasons. She has developed her own unique movement language. She believes strongly in artistic collaboration, with artists as forward-thinking as she is. Her work grows out of a long, 6-month process of working closely with her dancers whom she carefully hand picks.  Given the trend in the United States for dance artists to create work quickly, under the pressure of limited financial resources, limited rehearsal space, and  touring deadlines, we offered Mary the commission so that she would have adequate resources to create in a time period that she felt comfortable with, and with the dancers and collaborating artists she strongly wanted to work with.

People have asked us what the work looks like. We can't say. Another aspect of our commission is that we purposely do not sit in on rehearsals and offer feedback-- we trust  the artists we commission implicitly and that too offers a freedom to them to create without pressure.

We love being in the audience, discovering a new work--just as the rest of our audience will do beginning tomorrow evening. 

"Childhood Star" is the name of Mary's new work. What does it mean? We don't know. What will the movement be like? We can't say precisely. How will the piece look? Again, we don't have the answers.

What we do know is that Mary will create a work that derives from her inner self.  Based on the work that we have seen in recent years, Mary is digging deeper into herself and creating dance that is highly personal and moving. She has a wonderful group of dancers, plus an outstanding composer, Darrin Verhagen, with whom she has collaborated in the past--Darrin is Australian and has collaborated many times with Chunky Move, another of our favorite companies. Mary has also selected Portland-based artist Christine Bourdette to create the set pieces. Christine collaborated with Minh Tran on "Nocturnal Path" in October 2003, and she, like Mary, is one of the seminal figures in Portland's rich arts scene. Doing lights is Portland's gifted Jeff Forbes, a master lighting designer well known for his work with Artists Repertory Theatre, Imago, Broadway Rose, and many Portland-based choreographers. He also happens to be  White Bird's excellent Technical Manager.

Since we started White Bird in 1997, we have encouraged our audience to travel with us on a journey of discovery. The place where Mary Oslund will take us over the next three nights will be memorable indeed.