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BRIC OPEN Festival /

Dance = Freedom: Urban Bush Women: Dance & Song for Every Body

All are welcome for this special series of classes celebrating movement as freedom of expression.

Date

Apr 29, 2017 • 12:45 PM - 2:00 PM

Cost

FREE

Urban Bush Women’s BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) presents: If you can Talk, you can Sing, if you can Move, you can Dance facilitated by Tendayi Kuumba and Love Muwwakkil.

This exploration of movement and song embraces the ideas that each individual has a unique and powerful contribution to make, and that our bodies are a powerful source of agency. The goal is for Every Body to find their level of challenge and comfort, partake according to their abilities, and appreciate the groups’ diversity as an attribute to their community. Participants will also engage spiritually and emotionally in song and discover historical reference points that increase our understanding of the power of singing together. This is a class designed for the community, no prior dance or music experience is needed.

Additional classes in the Dance = Freedom series include the following:

Urban Bush Women (UBW) galvanizes artists, activists, audiences and communities through performances, artist development, education and community engagement. With the ground-breaking performance ensemble at its core, ongoing initiatives like the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) and the developing Choreographic Center, UBW continues to affect the overall ecology of the arts by promoting artistic legacies; projecting the voices of the under-heard and people of color; bringing attention to and addressing issues of equity in the dance field and throughout the United States; and by providing platforms and serving as a conduit for culturally and socially relevant experimental art makers.

Tendayi Kuumba (Dancer) is a graduate of North Atlanta High School of Performing Arts and Spelman College. Her training ranges from Buffalo Inner City Ballet, Ballethnic, Callanwolde Fine Arts, and Moving in the Spirit. Currently, Tendayi is a company member of Urban Bush Women, ASE Dance Theater Collective, and Axam Dance Theater Experience. Past works include Liberata Dance Theater, Marjani Forte of LOVE/FORTE Collective, T Lang Dance, and Nathan Trice/Rituals Performance Project StrangeLove. Tendayi performs regularly as a resident Jazz vocalist at the Williamsburg Music Center with the Gerry Eastman Quartet every Friday night. She gives thanks and blessings for life, love, breath, and the pursuit of happiness.

Love Muwwakkil (Dancer) received a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. After two seasons with Urban Bush Women, Love went on to perform in HairSpray on the largest cruise ship in the world, as well as performing in several off- Broadway productions and as a member of contemporary pole dance company, The Pulse Project. You can follow her dance happenings on Instagram @lovemeonce.

NOTE: Capacity at the Dance = Freedom classes is limited, and admission is on a first come, first served basis, whether you have RSVP'ed or not. Please come early to ensure entry.


The BRIC OPEN Festival aims shine a light on the power of inclusive, participatory arts & media programming to shake up our ideas about who makes and consumes culture, whose voices and stories sit at the center of artistic creation, and how we come together to imagine, and move toward, the future we want.

In an effort to make The BRIC OPEN Festival truly accessible, all events are FREE with RSVP, but if you have the means, and you value artistic and cultural work, please consider making a donation to support the continued health of this programming at BRIC. Donate here!

BRIC OPEN Co-Sponsor: