Corsets, Grains and Greenways: Dancing Downtown Ann Arbor
About the Project
A series of short dance performances unfold along a four-block route from downtown west to the creek valley at the original western boundary of Ann Arbor. The first performance location is WSG Gallery at 306 S. Main Street, in an exemplary rehabbed nineteenth-century building also housing other local businesses. The dances continue west, performing in the Downtown Home and Garden barn at 210 S. Ashley Street, then traversing areas in the creek valley and along the railroad—gritty and overlooked spaces with an industrial past, on the way to somewhere else. The dances end where the residential Old West Side begins.The finale site at 415 W. Washington is publicly owned and on the alignment of the urban greenway trail envisioned by our non-profit ACGC.
As a community partner in this project, the Allen Creek Greenway Conservancy is co-sponsoring a memorable public experience located, in part, on the envisioned non-motorized urban greenway trail bordering downtown Ann Arbor on the west. By sponsoring memorable experiences in the envisioned greenway we aim to create awareness of higher possibilities for the greenway trail area, resulting in its transformation into a community gathering place with greenway beauty.
The mission of the ACGC is to create an urban greenway trail generally within the Ann Arbor Railroad right of way and the Allen’s Creek alignment. The envisioned trail connects neighborhoods with downtown Ann Arbor and extends north to the existing Washtenaw County Border-to-Border greenway trail that parallels the Huron River. The greenway will be about a fifteen-minute walk through downtown to the University of Michigan central campus. University of Michigan athletic facilities, including the football stadium, flank about a third of the southern length of the envisioned urban greenway trail.
The ACGC recognizes the impact of memorable community experiences in building public support for redevelopment of this public property as part of the envisioned urban greenway trail. We also realize the importance of documentation so that the memorable experience can grow through recorded moving images into a broadly collective one. By co-sponsoring Corsets, Grains and Greenways, the ACGC seeks to inspire our community to make the dance finale site at 415 W. Washington Street a primary place on the envisioned urban greenway trail. When complete, the greenway trail will not only connect Ann Arbor neighborhoods but also provide places for gatherings that connect us to each other.
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