about the festival

2024 Long Dash Festival

Why the Long Dash? The Long Dash Skipper, Polites mystic, is a brown and orange butterfly found in grassy habitats like meadows, marshes, stream banks and forest edges including on rare lands. Named after a butterfly like its sister programs — the Eastern Comma Artist-in-Residence and the Question Mark Butterfly Fellowship — the Long Dash Festival also brings to mind punctuation, in this case em-dashes though also perhaps en-dashes and hyphens, all marks of connection that bring two parts into relationship with each other. Similarly, the Long Dash Festival brings together the worlds of art and science—as well as those of Musagetes and rare — to explore what happens in the overlap. 
Illustration by Cai Sepulis

2024 Schedule

Download: 2024 Program

 
August 18, 2024
10:00 am
Sound Walk, Slit Barn

Curated by Guy Few, Artistic Director of NUMUS

Listen to the environment around you with musicians performing at various locations along the Grand Trunk Trail, Woodland Trail and River Trail. The full loop takes about an hour to explore. The Grand Trunk Trail features flat gravel trails. The Woodland and River Trails features soil/rocky substrate and areas with narrow footpaths and moderately rugged terrain with roots and rocks.

1:00 pm
BioBlitz

Become a community scientist and learn from experts in the field about how to find and identify species of plants, animals and insects while exploring rare’s Cliffs and Alvars.

A BioBlitz is a short period of biological surveying where a group of experts, naturalists and community members explore an area and record as many species as they can to help inform future research.

All experience levels are welcome! Groups will be leaving every hour from the ECO Centre at 1:00, 2:00 and 3:00 p.m.

3:00 pm
Sun Marks on a Tilted Planet

by Lisa Hirmer

A workshop designed for artists that invites participants to experiment together with making cyanotypes, a camera-less type of direct photo print that uses a specially coated paper, sunlight, and water.
1:00 pm - 4:45 pm
Becoming and Moving

Created by Alexandra Gelis, media artist and researcher, and Victoria Mata, dancer and choreographer.

Part I: Plant Fiber-Making and Migration Stories, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. A hands-on workshop using traditional paper-making techniques while weaving personal narratives of belonging and migration to craft a wearable sculpture that reflects our interconnections with the land and the intricate web of life thriving amidst the Cattail and Phragmites plants.

Part II: Interpretive Performance by Victoria Mata, 4:45 p.m. Accomplished dancer and choreographer Victoria Mata translates the stories and connections shared in the "Becoming and Moving" workshop into a movement exploration. The wearable sculpture, embodying our shared journeys, is animated by Victoria's movements through the landscape of rare.

Research, Sound and Land Sculpture: Alexandra Gelis Dancer and Choreographer: Victoria Mata Wearable piece: IxBalam, Maxine Baker in collaboration with Victoria Mata and Alexandra Gelis.

Festival Photography

Presented by rare Charitable Research Reserve and Musagetes.

SoundWalk is Presented in Partnerships with Numus

© 2026. All Rights Reserved.