Michael Bodel:
The Institute for Folding

VDA 2025 Artist in Residence

A cardboard choreography of human knowledge, neglect and wonder.

Created by Michael Bodel

Choreography and Performance by Michael Bodel, Cailin Morgan, and Hanna Satterlee

Original Score by Rodrigo MT

Tickets and Tour Dates

We are delighted to partner with outstanding performing arts institutions throughout the state in bringing Michael’s work to an array of communities. Please join us for a showing of The Institute for Folding!

Click on each tour location to find links to purchase tickets for each show. Please note that we will not email or mail tickets; we have a list of names of ticket holders at the door.

  • Wednesday, September 17th | 7:30-8:30 PM

    Mahaney Arts Center
    72 Porter Field Rd
    Middlebury, 05753

    Tickets: $20 ($5 for students)

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    The show will be preceded by a master class with Michael in the afternoon of the 17th

    MASTER CLASS INFO

  • Saturday, September 20th | 7:30-8:30 PM

    Highland Center for the Arts
    2875 Hardwick St
    Greensboro, VT 05841

    Tickets: $20

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  • Friday, September 26th | 7-8 PM

    Next Stage Arts
    15 Kimball Hill
    Putney, VT 05346

    Tickets: $20

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  • Friday, October 3rd | 7:30-8:30 PM

    First Congregational Church of Burlington
    38 S Winooski Ave
    Burlington, VT, 05401

    Tickets: $20

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  • Wednesday, October 29th | 7:30-8:30 PM

    Briggs Opera House
    5 S Main St
    White River Junction, VT 05001

    TICKETS: $20

The Work:

The Institute for Folding is an interdisciplinary dance work in layers, literally. Through movement, language, live sound, and 30 sheets of cardboard, the work unpeels our human relationship to knowledge—our drive for scientific understanding, the ebb and flow of our ignorance, and our current disregard for what has been discovered.

This is a dance for our precipitous moment when adult trust in knowledge (such knowledge) has faltered and we have lost the collective wonder (such wonder) that once filled the eyes of our children and early civilizations. And it lasts about an hour.

A photo of Michael standing in a field

Photo by Swoyer Photography

About Michael:

Michael makes interdisciplinary dance works. Many integrate objects, place and sensorial stuff. His process involves wide-ranging research and both serious and silly play. And collaborators vary from project to project. Michael’s past works have included dances choreographed to oral histories of immigration, a pageant set in an apple orchard, and a dance iteration of Foucault’s Corps Utopique. Prior to The Institute for Folding, he created a dance project centered on grain—how it is sown, gathered, cared, hoarded and lost. 

He is honored to sit (and move) on the board of advisors of The Field Center in Rockingham, VT, and has served on the board of the Society of Dance History Scholars (now Dance Studies Association). He fancies writing about historical pageantry and embodied cognition, and works daily as the Director of External Affairs at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth. Michael lives with his family in the fields of Putney, VT.

Collaborating Artists

Rodrigo MT

Hanna Satterlee

Caitlin Morgan

  • Sound Composition

    Rodrigo Martínez Torres (CDMX, Mexico) is a composer interested in the inner architecture of sound, and its resonances with the mind. He is a multi-instrumentalist, and his work spans radio broadcasting and production, performing in rock bands, composing for the orchestra, and scoring for film and theater.

    Rodrigo’s recent projects include a sonic and sculptural installation inspired by the architecture of Luis Barragán and composing the score for the film Doce Lunas, which premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. Rodrigo has been a MacDowell Fellow, won the 2020 Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble Composition Competition, and the 2017 Arturo Márquez composition competition with his piece “Mambo Urbano”, for chamber orchestra. He studied music composition in Academia de Arte de Florencia (CDMX) and in Centro Superior Katarina Gurska (Madrid, Spain), and holds an MFA in Sonic Practice from Dartmouth College (NH, USA)

  • Ensemble

    Caitlin Morgan is a Burlington-based creative with roots in the Midwest and NYC, interested in flow-state embodiment as a means of eliciting nuanced, collective understanding and alchemical impact. Her work—commonly inspired by ecosomatics, communication theories, and postmodernism—has been featured across New York, Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan, including for the Junction Dance Festival (as a ChoreoLab artist in residence), the Small Plates Choreography Festival, Teatro LATEA, Mark Morris Dance Center, the Actors’ Fund Arts Center, and more. Woven around her movement research, Caitlin edits novels, performs with ANIMALDance and other local makers, and facilitates classes at Lines Vermont, Studio 3, and Sangha Studio.

  • Ensemble

    Hanna Satterlee creates performance experiences and conceptual artworks for stage, site and film. Hanna holds degrees and certifications in dance therapy, psychology, performance, choreography, vinyassa/yin/restorative yoga, non-profit management​, interdisciplinary art, and arts integration. Hanna shares these passions as an intergenerational educator, interdisciplinary performer​ + collaborator, contemporary choreographer, experimental curator and event producer.

    Dance has brought her around the world but always back home to VT, where she has had the opportunity to create new programs, curriculums, organizations and events for dancers and the public. ​Hanna is the founder of the Vermont Dance Alliance, the INSTINCT Experimental Dance Festival​, and ANIMAL Dance Performance and Production Company​. Hanna currently directs ANIMAL Dance, based in Burlington VT.

Devising Labs

This dance project has been developed in layers, and one of those is a series of free devising labs that were open to the public. Through these labs, participants workshoped cardboard as a choreographic inspiration and design partner, and contributed to the evolution of the performance. Special thanks to The Flynn, Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, and Next Stage Arts Project for hosting these labs, and to 2025 Junction Dance Festival, for featuring a work-in-progress showing.

Photo credits: Institute for folding, Kay McCabe, 2025

Special thanks to our Partners who have helped make this residency possible!

Vermont Arts Council, The Byrne Foundation, Middlebury Dance Department, Next Stage Arts Project, Highland Center for the Arts, Mascoma Bank, Junction Dance Festival, LINES Vermont Dance Studio, The Flynn, The Dance and Movement Center, The Putney School, The Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, and Junction Arts & Media!