2023 - 2024
Dancing Distributed Leadership
Photo by Dale Dong.
The Dancing Distributed Leadership project investigates how commitments to equity and shared power translate into the studio and onto the stage. This collaborative dance project explores shared leadership through choreography, performance, and community engagement. The work addresses balancing individual voice, deep listening, collective authorship, and an embodied study of different experiences.
Public sharings includes live and virtual evening-length performances paired with audience dialogues, public conversation, and movement workshops on shared leadership in dance, open rehearsals, writings, and resources.
The project is choreographed and led by an intergenerational, inter-disabled, multi-racial team composed of current and past B.L.A. leaders with diverse experiences and perspectives. Rebecca Fitton is a disabled improvisational dance-maker, audio describer and B.L.A.’s newest Co-Director; Cherie Hill is a choreographer who creates works inspired by the African Diaspora, nature, and feminism (B.LA. Co-Director since 2020); and Hope Mohr, is a choreographer working across dance, drawing, and writing, who transitioned out of Co-Directorship in early 2023 and is now a B.L.A. Affiliate Artist. Each brings their own aesthetic interests and choreographic processes to this shared creation.
Lead Artists
Cherie
Hill
she/her
Cherie Hill (she/her) is a choreographer, dancer, teacher, & scholar whose art explores how human expression is conveyed through the body in collaboration with nature, music, & visual imagery. She has held artist residencies with Footloose, the Milk Bar, CounterPulse, & the David Brower Center. She has danced with BARD, Makomba West African Drum & Dance, David Dorfman, Kiandanda Dance, & Helander Dance Theater. In 2020 she collaborated with several artists to create the Earth Echoes Virtual Gallery, an online exhibition of local Bay Area/Ohlone Territory artists whose work speaks to the power of feminism, ecology, and identity. Cherie’s work blends meditation, somatics, black feminism, improvisation, & African Diaspora dance. iriedance.com
Photo by Carla Rhea
Rebecca
Fitton
she/they
Rebecca Fitton is from many places and people. She cultivates community through movement, food, and conversation. Her work in the dance field as an artist-scholar, producer, and advocate centers on shifting cultural policy, asian american communities, and disability justice/accessibility. She has been an artist-in-residence at Center, The Croft, LEIMAY, EMERGENYC, and received a 2020 New Work Grant from Queens Council on the Arts. Fitton serves as the Studio Director for Will Rawls, dances and writes audio descriptions for Adrienne Westwood, and organizes direct action with Structures for Change. rebeccafittonprojects.com
Photo by Sarah Annie Navarette
ID: Rebecca, a mixed-race Asian American person with messy short brown hair smiles. They are wearing short-sleeved, navy corduroy jumpsuit.
Hope Mohr
she/her
Hope Mohr weaves art and activism as a choreographer, curator, cultural worker, and writer. Mohr trained at S.F. Ballet School, the Merce Cunningham, and Trisha Brown Studios and performed for Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown. Mohr’s choreography “conveys emotional and socio-political contents that just ride underneath the surface of a rigorous vocabulary” and has been presented by 18th Street Arts Center, ICA San Francisco, 836M Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art, Highways Performance Space, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Moody Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, ODC Theater, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her book, “Shifting Cultural Power” was published by the National Center for Choreography in 2020. She won an Izzie for Outstanding Choreography in 2020. In 2015, she was named to the YBCA 100 annual nationwide list of artists posing important questions about contemporary culture. In 2014, Dance Magazine’s Wendy Perron named Mohr one of the “women leaders” in dance. hopemohr.org
Photo courtesy of the artist
Past
Experiments in Motion
Mar 22nd - Mar 24th, 2024
SPACE 124 | Project Artaud.
Experiments in Motion, was a live performance that featured new works by choreographers Rebecca Fitton, Cherie Hill, and Hope Mohr. The artists shared their inquiries and discoveries from the Dancing Distributed Leadership project through a performative lens with three distinct dance premieres:
approval process - Directed by Rebecca Fitton and co-created and performed by Zoe Huey, Emily Hansel, Melissa Lewis Wong, and Lawrence Tome
The Space In Between - Choreographed and performed by Cherie Hill, with dance and performance by Andreína Maldonado and video art by Leslie Foster.
Partial View - Directed by Hope Mohr. Co-created and performed by Rosemary Hannon, Belinda He, and Hope Mohr
A collage of six full color stills from choreographer Rebecca Fitton, Cherie Hill, and Hope Mohr's dance rehearsals and creative processes. Four of the images show dancers in motion, two are stills from video art featuring dancers in motion. There are three images per row.
Emboyding Shared Leadership Workshop
January 26th - 27th, 2024
Shotgun Studios, Berkeley / Zoom
Offered both in-person and online, the Embodying Shared Leadership workshop explored various ways in which shared leadership can be practiced and embodied with others. Facilitated by Rebecca Fitton, Cherie Hill, and Hope Mohr, these workshops were open to artists, educators, administrators, and activists interested in using movement exploration and the wisdom of the body to help reveal patterns and behaviors in leadership, giving an alternative viewpoint regarding relationships, communication, and diverse leadership styles.
Moments from in-person Embodying Shared Leadership workshop with Rebecca Fitton, Cherie Hill, and Hope Mohr.
Artist Residency at
The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron
At NCCAkron, the Dancing Distributed Leadership team worked with artistic mentors Paloma McGregor and Bebe Miller. They presented their first “Embodying Shared Leadership” workshop, where the choreographers experimented with dance scores that explored light to heavy subject matter, physical weight-sharing, and dancing various administrative roles such as leading, following, and assisting. They embodied ways leadership can take up space, such as in the center or on the periphery of a room, and experimented with moving in and out of leadership while allowing time for physical rest and self-care.
Cherie, Rebecca, and Hope slowly move into and against each other as they navigate sharing weight. The trio is dancing in a large studio with grey marley and white walls. Video by Dale Dong.
Ongoing Project Inquiry:
What is it like to honor collective power?
How do we each experience this embodied work differently?
What might we learn about the future of a distributed leadership structure through shared embodiment?
How can the wisdom of the body, one of B.L.A.’s core values, influence both performance and administration?
How do we transform unilateral support of one choreographer into expansive and shared support of diverse choreographers?
What does redistribution of choreographic power in the studio and on stage look like, and how does it impact the greater field?
Press
B.L.A.’s distributed leadership model exemplifies non-hierarchical models for the dance field as highlighted in the New York Times article, Dance’s Communal Ethos Is Moving Into the Office and Boardroom, featuring B.L.A. staff.