ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Photographs of the Brooklyn waterfront by Leslie Arlette Boyce, visiting assistant professor of dance at Bard, will be on view from Tuesday, November 25, through Tuesday, December 9, at the Bertelsmann Campus Center lounge. An artist’s reception is planned for Friday, December 5, in the lounge from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Exhibition hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Over the past two years, Boyce has enjoyed three exhibitions of her photographs in Brooklyn. They caused "a minor sensation," according to Jennifer Needleman in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. "[They] are nostalgic, but not sentimental, recognizable, but not cliched. They are of key Manhattan and Brooklyn sights, yet are captured from unusual angles and soaked in unusual light."
A Brooklyn native, Boyce rediscovered photography after 20 years by picking up a camera and heading over to the Brooklyn waterfront in the early spring of 2000. She began to focus on the area of the Gowanus Canal that "has for decades been one of those places that no human of good intent would ever find themselves." The other area that drew Boyce’s eye was D.U.M.B.O. (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). "While growing up in Brooklyn Heights, D.U.M.B.O. was the place I was told as a child never to go down to," she recalls. "It was dark, inhabited only by rats, and until only fairly recently had that unmistakable scent of dampness and old rotting buildings." Boyce says that she will continue to record this waterfront area of Brooklyn in her sepia photographs.
A specialist in Dunham-based dance technique, Boyce has performed widely over a period of 20 years. Her work as an actor and musical theater performer ranges from the Sidney Lumet film Q & A to Elizabeth Swados’s Caribbean musical The Mermaid Wakes. As a dancer and performing artist Boyce has performed in Africa, Europe, and the United States, in projects choreographed by members of the José Limon and Katherine Dunham Companies, as well as others. She has also directed and choreographed two productions for children at New York’s Apollo Theater: Flying Fables and The Life and Legacy of Madam Zora.
