Experience the work of Lela Aisha Jones and Vershawn Sanders Ward in an intimate, intricate, and inclusive format as they facilitate through movement and dialogue how they created and conceptualize their solo works presented in The Body Wails, The Body Restores.
Afro Contemporary & Diasporic Movement Practice Workshop | Thursday, March 16 | 6:00pm – 7:30pm | Pay what you can
DMP’s are contemporary movement practices grounded in dance cultures and traditions of African and Black peoples. This workshop will be an exciting journey into the creative potential of the spiritual, conceptual, and physical energies that exist in movement of African descendant and Black peoples. With Lela expect a movement-based experience that promotes exhilarating body discoveries with physical explosion and intricate narratives. With Vershawn expect an introduction into the movement esthetic of Afro-Contemporary dance. Afro-Contemporary is a dance style that fuses Africanist movement vocabulary, contemporary dance and Chicago house.
Film Screening: Lynching & Love | Thursday, March 16 | 8pm | Pay what you can
Native Portals is a multiple episode movement performance series. This evening-length episode, Native Portals: Lynching & Love (2012), interprets first exposures to noose lynching as experienced by the artists in the work, offers embodied renditions of the contemporary experiences of U.S. blackness/womaness, and experimentally touches upon nation love when traumatic histories are unresolved. The film version was shot and edited by Tiona McClodden (Leeway Transformation Awardee, 2016 Pew Fellow) and was first premiered in 2015 as a part of Headlong Video Vault curated by Ellen Chenoweth.
*There will be a special post-show meet & greet for Art & Change Collective Members
Brenda Dixon Gottschild (Solo Work): RACE IS THE PLACE IS THE SPACE | Friday March 17 & Saturday March 18 | 6pm | Free
Referencing the Aunt Jemima stereotype to set the stage and through performative, embodied lecture, Brenda Dixon Gottschild travels into the present via her Afro-expressionistic interpretation of selected poems. Concept, Costume, Creation, Performance: Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild
Holistic African Dance Intensive with Peaches Jones, Zakiya Cornish | Saturday, March 18 | 11am – 2pm | $30
Using vinyasa yoga-inspired techniques, instructors will guide participants through a practice to stretch and condition the body, develop a strong core, and embody key elements that aid in approaching African dance technique. Participants may utilize this practice in their everyday life for conditioning the body overall as well as preparing for any African dance class. Instructors will also break down and intricately review a West African dance from Mali.
The Body Wails, The Body Restores | Friday March 17 & Saturday March 18 | 8pm | $20 in advance/$25 day of show
*There will be a pre-show reception with the artists at 5pm, Saturday March 18th
NATIVE PORTALS: CONTINUUM OF ACTION (WITNESS)
Lela Aisha Jones | FlyGround
Native Portals: Continuum of Action (Witness) centers the body as a place of witnessing and testifying–seeing this act as multifaceted, essential activists and advocates for human and civil rights. They save the stories, feel the pain, release the anger, restore, and keep going. This work weaves together contemporary reflections on the tumultuous events surrounding the MOVE organization’s efforts to live autonomously by growing their own food (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S 1985), The Cradock Four’s (Cradock, South Africa, 1985) efforts to give agency to their community against South African Apartheid, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission transcripts created after the Greensboro Massacre (North Carolina, U.S 1979)—particularly the voices of the children. The trauma of the past, unresolved and unprocessed, continues to re-occur in our future.
#SAY HERNAME
Vershawn Sanders Ward
Ward’s riveting new solo work, #SAYHERNAME examines the criminalization of female black activists Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, drawing parallels to the present day arrest and subsequent death of Sandra Bland. The solo dancer finds herself in a confined space; both physically (inside a prison cell) and mentally, bound by her condition and perceived loss of POWER.
NATIVE PORTALS: RELEASE
Lela Aisha Jones | FlyGround
Native Portals: Release is a renewed section of the evening-length movement performance piece titled Native Portals: Release Mourning Clearing presented by Intercultural Journeys in Spring 2016. This work reflects upon witnessing the aftermath of the most recent killings of Black people that is now very present in terrifying ways—smothering hope and evoking anger. It is about the continual processing of trauma and how you get over without washing over the spiritual, physical, and emotional violence that is so vibrantly alive in our U.S. existence today.
Tickets and more info here
The Painted Bride Art Center
230 Vine St.
Philadelphia, Pa
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