The Dance Complex, in collaboration with Jean Dany Joachim, Anita Morson-Matra, Denise Washington, and Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion, present Words & Movement on June 2, 2024. This one day event features workshops and dialogue, exploring artistic expression through poetry, spoken word, dance, and beyond.
Words & Movement invites participants from all artistic backgrounds to explore how text and motion, as individual and combined practices, can be catalysts for deepening your creative process. How can movement inform your writing? How can writing inform your movement practice? Through this event, we aim to cultivate collaborations and strengthen an artist’s main focus through a fusion of forms.
The curators will lead sessions in yoga, text, movement, and poetry as well as mentorship in individual and small group settings. Other activities will include guided artistic “speed dating,” fostering connections between participants through short sessions of idea sharing and observation, and an end-of-day Words & Movement Slam. The Slam is a focused hour to informally perform existing works or works-in-progress inspired by the day’s events.
INVESTMENT
No one will be turned away.
Value: $400
DC Rate: $100 per person
Participants will have the option to pay $100-400. Individuals paying more than $100 will allow an extra percentage of scholarships to those needing assistance.
Scholarships available: Please contact Joe at [email protected] for workshop spots that open due to the generosity of other attendees and potentional additional funding becoming available.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
*Events and times are subject to change.
11:00- 11:30 Registration/Arrival
11:30 – 11:45 Group Welcome
11:45- 12:40 Yoga/Meditation/Words
12:45 – 1:30 Text/Poetry Workshop
1:30- 2:30 Break/Observe Classes
2:30- 2:45 Check in
2:45 – 4:00 Movement/Text in Relationship
4:00- 4:45 Creative “Speed-Dating”
5:00-6:00 Break/Work time
6:00 – 6:50 Movement and Words Open Slam
6:50 Ending Circle
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Poets and poet advocates Jean Dany Joachim, Anita Morson-Matra and Denise Washington collaborate with Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion to create this unique single day workshop. Each will be teaching workshops or facilitating creative space for the participants. Collectively they bring experience from their worlds of poetry, of spoken word/performance, working with communities as artists, creatives, advocates. With multiple decades of experience- that includes the use of words and movement as tools of awareness and advocacy/literacy fighting ignorance on decades of racial unrest and violence, years of the AIDS crisis, the continued” otherings” of our world – the organizers bring their own experiences along with other guest teachers and facilitators
Jean Dany Joachim
Poet, Actor, past Cambridge Poet Populist, Poet in residence at First Church in Cambridge, Director of City Night Readings Series, in residence at Little Crêpe Café in Cambridge. He has three published collections of poetry, Crossroads / Chimenkwaze (2013), Avec des Mots (2014), and Quartier (2016). Jean Dany serves on the boards of the New England Poetry Club, and (JAE), Jean Appolon Expressions, Dance Company. He says, Life is Good! http://jeandanyjoachim.com/
Anita Morson Matra
Anita Morson Matra is an urban planner, creative, place leader, and organizational strategist. A former nonprofit leader, Ms. Morson-Matra has spent the last few years working as a consultant with Massachusetts cities and towns to identify opportunities for recovery and growth through the Rapid Recovery Program and supporting arts and cultural organizations throughout the state in the areas of nonprofit management and leadership development.
Anita’s work is often at the intersection of urban planning and arts and culture, with a focus on equitable access to resources, opportunities, and spaces for artists, creatives, and cultural organizations.
The throughline in Anita’s work is a commitment to a leadership approach that centers racial equity and social justice. As evidenced in a brief article she wrote for the spring/summer 2022 Issue of the Boston Art Review, Anita captured some of the housing challenges that are currently experienced by artists in the City.
Anita is the Creator/ Founder/ Curator of Nubian Nights: the Sights and Sounds of Jazz in Roxbury and Baldwin in the Park. Anita was recently recognized by WBUR as one of The Makers, 15 artists and creatives changing the cultural landscape in the Greater Boston area and was a finalist for the National Public Housing Museums Artist as Instigator Residency.
Anita is a huge supporter of the work of our park stewards, including the City of Boston’s Department of Parks and Recreation, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway. You can often find Anita wandering through these beautiful greenspaces. Ms. Morson-Matra strongly believes that our parks spaces are some of the City’s greatest assets, providing rare opportunities for exploration and healing in this dense urban environment https://www.anitamorsonmatra.com/
Denise Washington
Denise is so excited to be using the power of poetry to positively bring people together one poem at a time! She is the Founder, CEO and Curator of her #Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard Event Featuring Akili Jamal Haynes, Becoming Chibuzo, #Pop-Up Poetry’s Multi-disciplinary Artist!
#Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard Event, is a movement that creates a safe and non-judgmental spaces for all people to breathe, listen, recite and enjoy! Denise opened for KRS-One at the Black Market, Buy Back Your Block in Nubian Square. Her Poem, “A Quilt of Greatness” was made into a short-film, with Akili Jamal Haynes, was selected to have a screening in The 2022 Roxbury International Film Festival.
She was born and raised in Roxbury, MA; is a METCO graduate of Lincoln -Sudbury Regional High School, an Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts Alum, a voice student of the late John Andrew Ross, a Mentee of the late Ed Bullins and is a New England Poetry Club Advisory Board Member. She holds a MS in Early Childhood Education from Wheelock College and a BS from Emerson College in Television Production/Creative Writing.
Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion
Boston-based Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion (PDM) creates dance and dance/theatre, translating the humane within everyday lives into extraordinary studies of the human condition. Driven by collaborative models, the company brings together a sum of ages, races, queer and disabilities communities to create diverse subject matter and metaphor for their works on site, on stage, on screens. Through creative practice and products, the company is an agent of advocacy and creativity literacy.
Guest collaborators are often engaged in the processes and performances of the work, and have included those from the LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities, seniors and youth, disabilities communities, and intersections of civic entities and citizenry, staff of business organizations and family groups. The engagement process of culling personal histories and movement through inquiry and guided movement development creates a rare communicative power that translates into performances. Performances can be grand spectacles on-site, miniature, intimate dances on tabletops, dynamic explorations of words and images made for video and screen, or more traditional performances on stages.
PDM has been supported in residencies at the The Yard/Martha’s Vineyard, Vermont Performance Lab, Boston Dance Alliance, Villa Victoria Cultural Center/Boston (through support from New England Foundation for the Arts’ Creative City grant), The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and The Dance Complex, Cambridge, MA, where Peter is the Executive Artistic Director. Recent performances have included the debut performances at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and at Gibney Dance in NYC in 2018; at Boston’s famed Hatch Shell in several commissions from Landmarks Orchestra; and at Boston’s Museum of Science, virtually, in a collaboration with Masary Studios. The company just completed a year long residency with The Rose Kennedy Greenway’s MOMENTUM, creating alongside 3 other companies a festival of site-specific dances
Peter DiMuro (he series) has woven a career as a dancer, actor, choreographer, director, teacher, arts engager and facilitator of creativity for over 30 years. He was Artistic Director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange 2003-2008, capping a 15-year relationship as a collaborator, performer and lead-artist with the company founded by MacArthur “Genius” Lerman. His career has taken him and his work to 48 of the US states, Hong Kong, Japan and throughout Europe.
His work has appeared internationally, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Dance Place and Church Street in DC, and commissioned by the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts, The Florida Dance Festival, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, The Bates Dance Festival, Auras Dance Theatre (Lithuania), Boston Dance Umbrella. He taught several summers at the Cornerstone Theatre Institute/LA, American Dance Festival, Florida Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival. He was awarded Salem State University’s Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award in 2017.
Peter was named a White House Millennial Artist, a Mayor of Boston/ProArts Arts Award recipient, and his work has received grants/support from the National Performance Network, the Mass Artists’ Foundation, Mass Cultural Council, MetLife Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
www.publicdisplaysofmotion.com
Picture above are on site photos for a work recently completed, a commission from the Rose Kennedy Greenway’s MOMENTUM site-specific/responsive festival.