VCUarts Dance + Choreography is delighted to present VCUarts Dance NOW 2021, new work in the virtual space by students, faculty, and featuring a collaborative re-staging of Artist Journal by guest artists Urban Bush Women. Rotating programs will be screened online for four weeks: Fridays, February 19, 26, and March 5 and 12, at 7:00 pm EST. All performances are FREE and available to the public. Part I on February 19 screens here
February 19: Urban Bush Women’s Artist Journal, collaboratively re-staged on VCU Dance majors, and new works by students Tamara Denson + Ashley Sese and recent graduate Megan Siepka.
Over two weeks in January, Urban Bush Women company members worked with VCUarts Dance students and faculty advisors to re-stage the company’s Artist Journal project. As described by UBW, “the Artist Journal is a sharing of our active research. We cite our bodies and our environment as reservoirs rich with experience and memory. By sharing family stories, recipes, and remedies – sitting among trees, waterways, and the Moon, we listen and excavate. There are practices for navigating discomfort, healing, and visioning onward that have charted the survival and progression of people of color. Many of these we know and exercise, others we seek to uncover. This is our navigation for Re-Membering and Restoring. In an open rehearsal setting, this Virtual (Zoom) event combines moments of informal performance, audience interaction and conversation, and a dance party. Our Artist Journal is an invitation into our creative and research-driven process of creating multidisciplinary work and offers an opportunity to reflect and connect with others around some of the ideas we are exploring.”
In addition to Artist Journal, the department is delighted to feature new work by dance majors Tamara Denson and Ashley Sese, who have collaborated on the dance film, Awake Asleep, and recent graduate Megan Siepka whose film, the life dependent is a socially-distanced trio that deconstructs the magnetism between humans and technology. Imagination is utilized as an escape.
VCUarts Dance NOW 2021 is the fifth event of the 2020-2021 performance season, a series of virtual events created under COVID protocols and in the spirit of innovation and connection. This season is made possible in part by generous support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.