Liberating Bodies: Revolutionizing Sites Through Integrative Performance

A Public Dialogue with Onye Ozuzu & amara tabor smith

Presented by Bridge Live Arts,  Curated by Cherie Hill

Monday, April 3, from 6:00 - 7:30 PM PST, Online/Zoom

“The place to begin the all-important healing of trauma is with the body. Your body. Each of our bodies.” - Resma Menakem

How are Black artists working with communities to heal and liberate the body? What rituals are being placed to weave ancestral memory with present-day lineage? Join Bridge Live Arts for dialogue and movement workshops with Black Diaspora dance artists working between the nuances of sites, sound, community, and embodiment.

ABOUT

This artist talk is a conversation between choreographers Onye Ozuzu and amara tabor smith about their creative approaches to organizing movement of the body in relationship to buildings and experiences of space and time - exploring architecture as site, city as site, and community as site.

• Onye Ozuzu (she/her) is a performing artist, choreographer, administrator, educator and researcher currently serving as the Dean of the College of the Arts at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Previously she was Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Her administrative work has sought to balance visionary and deliberate progress in the arenas of curricular, artistic, and systemic diversity, cultural relativity, collaboration and interdisciplinarity. In that work she has been a frequent collaborator with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Onye has been presenting Dance works since 1997. Based in the U.S., her work has been seen at venues such as Seattle Festival of Improvisational Dance, Kaay Fecc Festival Des Tous les Danses (Dakar, Senegal), La Festival del Caribe (Santiago, Cuba), Lisner Auditorium (Washington DC), McKenna Museum of African American Art (New Orleans, LA), danceGATHERING Lagos, as well as many anonymous site-specific locations. Recent work includes “Touch My Beloved’s Thought,” a collaboration with composer Greg Ward, and “Project Tool,” a work which garnered a 2018 Joyce Award. She facilitates work in a group improvisational score “The Technology of the Circle.”  Her current project, “Space Carcasess” is working with an international and interdisciplinary team of collaborators: visual artist Native Maqari, video-projection designer Simon Rouby, musician/sound artist Ben Lamar Gay, and dancers Joshua Akubo and Michael Mestas. “Space Carcasses” is funded by the National Performance Network and the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project.  She continues to serve the field of dance as a thought leader, speaker and curator. 

• amara tabor smith (she/they) is an Oakland, CA based dance and performance maker, and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater. She describes her work as Conjure Art. Her interdisciplinary site-responsive and community specific performance making practice utilizes Yoruba Lukumí spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. Her work is rooted in Black, queer, feminist principles that insist on liberation, joy, home fullness and well-being.  She is a 2021 Rainin Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Fellow, 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and a 2017 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow. Amara is currently a teaching artist in residence at Stanford University.

TICKET PRICES

$10 - $50 sliding scale

BIPOC Subsidy: As part of Liberating Bodies, we are providing ten subsidies to participants that identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or as People of Color (BIPOC). Each subsidy allows someone to register for both workshops for only $10. Please email admin@bridgelivearts.org to access this support.

NOTAFLOF: If you are not able to afford the lowest ticket price but would still like to attend, please email admin@bridgelivearts.org.

ACCESSABILITY

If you require ASL interpretation or any other accessibility requests to attend, please email cherie@bridgelivearts.org by 3/20.

Photo Credits from L to R: 1) Photo of Onye Ozuzu by William Frederking. Alt text: Onye Ozuzu looks directly at the camera with a smile. She is wearing gold earrings and necklace and brown leather jacket. 2) Photo of amara tabor smith by Jean Melesaine.