Moving Experiences: Basking in the Glo at Serenbe
Written by Marie, Posted in Miscellaneous
“Marie, you’ve just got to go,” Monica Olsen, Serenbe’s director of marketing, told me after seeing Glo perform in Atlanta.
I was intrigued. Glo is — and this is the understatement of the year — a dance troupe. I have always adored dance and movement and felt a special connection with maenads. Back in the days of Dionysus, maenads were female followers who performed passionate dances in nature. Glo is made up of modern-day maenads.
Their first performance at Serenbe was at Art Over Dinner, a monthly event at Serenbe’s Art Farm. The guests gathered in Grange, where there were already a few dancers, with others dancing their way out of Swann Ridge. I had no idea what to expect but was quickly caught up in their performance, which happens completely without music and looks spontaneous but is completely choreographed by founder Lauri Stallings.
It was entrancing and unlike anything I’d seen before. As they say on their site, Glo is “part choreographed bodies, interactive art installation and catalog of relational, migration and choreographed systems of fleshed out textures and inner sensations that summon you to think about how you being here makes a community.”
And that last part about community is what makes Glo’s purpose special to those of us at Serenbe. Lauri’s mission is to bring spirit and art into communities through her dance troupe. She takes her passion on the road while ours is right here on terra firma in the Chattahoochee Hill Country.
After the performance, which led the guests up to the Art Farm, I sat with Lauri at dinner and immediately knew I’d met a kindred spirit. We had an amazing, instantaneous and very soulful connection—it was like a bubble descended over the two of us and we sat and talked for hours.
Glo’s Serenbe performance was a rehearsal for a six-week residency of performances in New York’s Central Park as part of Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park, an art project commissioned by the Central Park Conservancy. When they returned, we invited them back to Serenbe, this time for a two-week residency, which they used to polish The Traveling Show: Beautiful Stranger, a performance supported by a SEED grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to bring hope through art to five small towns in Georgia.
I continue to be awed and inspired by Lauri and Glo. Hers is a message of hope, beauty and grace. She believes everyone should have access to art and the opportunity to see to the beauty that can be created through movement.