Look forward delivering my paper, Dance: African Diaspora Transforming Christian Spiritual Landscape, at the 2018 Dance Studies Association Conference in Malta.
Migration and Constructed Identities (process 1b) In the Midst of Strangers is a visual examination of difference, sameness, and the struggle to cultivate and maintain identity against the push of hegemony.
For several years I have been documenting (through photography and field notes) visible homeless populations in the United States, United Kingdom, and the Caribbean. In 2017 I began developing visual works inspired by the cardboard used by many of the homeless to announce their situation of homelessness and ignite voice, presence, resistance and power in the mundane landscape of the everyday. Below are two recent addition:
Portrait Dreams 2018
Portrait Dreams 2018 (Materials: cardboard, paint, plant soil, rocks, sea shells, dried roses, leaves, and poinsettia)
Looking Out Within
Looking Out Within (Materials: Cardboard, thread, paint)
Full Production in fall 2018!
Migration and Constructed Identities: these sections of the work is being choreographed for ten to twenty dancers. The spoken text (not shown here) will be taken from collected migration narratives; the music will be a combination of original and already released. I am currently in the studio with dancers, text, and rehearsal music.
Migration and Constructed Identities, which began in Belgium in summer of 2014, is presently in the U.S. creating new works from immigrant narratives. I am on the look our for dancers and performers, and rehearsals have begun in New York City and Boston. Please check back for open rehearsal invitations anticipated for early spring 2017.
We (De-Napoli Clarke who appeared virtually, and Jiannis Pachos, Panagiotis Pantidos, and I) had a fabulous time delivering the presentation Break-in Point: Somatic Narratives, the convergence of art and science in the transformation of temporal communities at the 2015 SDHS/CORD (Society of Dance History Scholars/the Congress on Research in Dance) Conference held in June 4 -7 in Athens, Greece.
2015 Conference theme Cut and Paste: Dance Advocacy in the age of Austerity was the perfect platform for this interdisciplinary trans-national collaboration. We are now editing and revising the conference presentation for publication.
Break-in’ Point, an arts and science collaboration with professional dance artist, De-Napoli Clarke , theoretical physicist, Jiannis Pachos, and myself, was sponsored by the University of Leeds Department of Physics and Astronomy and Stage@Leeds at University of Leeds. The project enjoyed two well received performances at the Stage@Leeds, at the University of Leeds, 7 June and 18 September 2012.
Reflections on the body and theology engagement project and workshop series Body Matters: Somatic Conversations on Christianity, Love, and Justice are being compiled, analyzed, written up for publication. This initiative has been particularly timely given the dynamic issues around justice, love, and black bodies in the United States, the politics of bodies in the Ukraine, the challenges to ethically appropriate responses to climate change and other ongoing issues of justice and the bodies of vulnerable peoples throughout the world, and the varying Christian responses.
Upcoming journeys to Toronto, Belgium and Slovania will include engagements for the project Migration and Constructed Identities.
MORE TO COME…
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