MONDAYS 7-9PM AT DESTINY ARTS CENTER, 970 GRACE AVE, OAKLAND, CA
*Please note: there will be no class on Monday, April 9th
Celebrate #DignityInProcess being in residence at Destiny Arts Center!
#DignityInProcess Artivist Director & Choreographer, ChE invites you to root yourself in the medicine of your ancestors in this interdisciplinary movement celebration of GNC/Queer/Trans Black & Native life. Part ritual, part performance art, part subversive strategy—we conjure Liberation through breath, body, and sound. In this #DignityInProcess Freedom School you will build Contemporary composition technique and learn choreography from an Afro-Indigenous lens with origins in dance forms spanning Afro-Modern, Congolese, Ring Shout processional and body percussion. This somatic investigation crosses genre and reshapes aesthetics, utilizing embodied storytelling and afro-futurist politik to decentralize Western frameworks in dance education. All bodies are welcome to sweat, stomp, and shout in a movement of soulful beloved community!
ALL LEVELS WELCOME
*Please bring an item connected to your cultural/ familial lineage or an ancestor you would like to call in for our collective altar. Your item will go home with you at the end of class.
**In practicing intersectional justice, we embody a commitment to keeping this space as accessible as possible, while recognizing our limitations. Please come as fragrance free as possible to honor our chemically sensitive community. There is a ramp at the front entrance. Building does have fluorescent lighting, but we can turn these off and use alternative lighting by request.
COST:
Discounted 3-class package- $40
$15 drop-in
Reserve your spot via PayPal:
step 1. Go to www.Paypal.com
step 2. click SEND tab and type in class amount to be sent to dignityinprocess@gmail.com (make sure to select friends and family gift to avoid unnecessary fees!)
step 3. Type "Ancestral Movement" and any other notes about the number of classes you are selecting
More about #DignityInProcess:
A pilot for Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Practice, #DignityInProcess is a nationally touring artivist toolkit in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, drawing upon the practices that have sourced the resilience of our ancestors for generations. This multidisciplinary platform merges art activism, ancestral healing, and QTGNC intersectional identity evolution within the Afro-Indigenous Diaspora. Through Art Actions- site specific performance rituals merged with direct action organizing, we call in the power of the ring shout, storytelling, movement, call and response to help us remember our sacred origins. Forming Wisdom Councils of Mixed Race, African-Native American, and Creole elders, multi-generational conversations lay the foundation for embodied accountability to sustain a movement of Black Liberation. Returning to the power of the circle, we build Freedom Schools embracing community learning that centers radical Black Feminism. Afro-futures emerge as we collectively celebrate the dignity of expansive Black life!
Follow the process at http://che-art.life/dignityinprocess-1/
About ChE:
ChE (they, them) is a Queer GNC Afro-Indigenous artivist weaving ancestral healing, transformative consulting, and social-engaged artmaking. ChE is an honored Fellow for the 2017-2018 Intercultural Leadership Institute celebrating their unique intersectional justice framework, Afro-Indigenous Liberatory Practice. Creator of the Underground Railroad: Liberatory Coaching for Creative Radicals of Color, ChE supports (QT)POC artists, activists, and innovators in charting a path to freedom. As the co-founder/host of the BGD podcast, Spirit Medicine, they provide accessible wellness tools and rituals centering (QT)POC. Rooted in multigenerational community, ChE is the founder of the Art Liberation Troupe, a QTPOC youth performance group utilizing mentorship, dance, guerilla theatre, and political education workshops as tools for social change. ChE’s work as a cultural organizer includes Breaking the Silence: Teen Salon, Destiny Arts Center’s Q.E.A.R., The Time is Now, Black Folks Dinner, Emergence,#BlackHealingMatters, and The New Orleans Loving Festival. As a director/ choreographer, ChE’s work is robust with gospel soul sounds and movement of the African Diaspora that leave feet stomping and hands clapping. Brown University’s Black Spatial Relics Artist-in-Residence, ChE brings their Black Lives Matter artivist toolkit, #DignityInProcess throughout the country—merging site-specific performance rituals, Afro-Indigenous Wisdom Councils, and Freedom Schools celebrating the dignity of expansive Black evolution. You can learn more at http://che-art.life/