Introducing our newest GROUND SERIES project grounding.
This project asks, ‘How can dance illuminate sites and monuments representing the Civil Rights movement?’ The site-specific performance will emerge at the Riverside Main Library, across from the Civil Rights Institute of Southern Inland California, on September 30, 2024 in the late afternoon.
Grounding responds to sites and monuments representing the Civil Rights movement to enliven the histories, reflect the struggles and strides, and animate our hearts and bodies into action. Choreographed and performed by Brittany Delany in collaboration with Riverside dancers Ana Cruz, Crystal Edwards, Edwin Sigüenza and Aisha Stewart, the ensemble dance will emphasize social dance, improvisation, collective joy and resilience.
Conceived by Miguel Vazquez, FAICP, Health Equity Urban and Regional Planner for Riverside University Health System, and GROUND SERIES co-director Brittany Delany, the site-specific performance celebrates their years of collaboration in the Arts & Planning Division of the American Planning Association and the Planning for Health Equity, Advocacy & Leadership (PHEAL) collective.
This work intentionally builds connections to planning professionals and urban strategists, as part of the American Planning Association California Chapter Conference ‘Cultivating our Future’, September 28-30, 2024 in Riverside. We are grateful to be in collaboration with the Civil Rights Institute of Southern Inland California. Their vision includes connecting people from all walks of life through stories, sharing of information, and personal relationships to make Inland Southern California a center of civil rights and social justice.
In our first rehearsal in August, our first steps involved gathering outside at two different sites in Riverside. We explored architectural features, highlighted unique built pathways and planted trees in the environment, and devised a mix of narrative and abstract moments to uplift the stories of these places. Key signature gestures and changes of direction emerged as shared vocabulary. Composing the sequence followed the thread of overarching thematics of the body in various states of being and action: the body dreaming, the body caring, the body resting, the body working in collaboration with fellow bodies, the body socializing, the body celebrating, the body carrying and beckoning forward bodies and beings into momentum. Following our site-based practice, we continued rehearsal in the studio. Drawing upon Delany's study of Afro-Brazilian dance at Wesleyan University with Ronald K. Brown, and in Los Angeles with Vera Pasos of Viver Brasil, the ensemble practiced the dance of Ogun, the Yoruba deity of war, metal and charge. The dance tell stories of Ogun cutting through the forest with his weapon to create a path, which can be seen as both the destruction of nature and the creation of something new. This repetitive, weighted dance cultivated a powerful group energy, pulsing across the space in a clear diagonal, sharpening the way forward. Following Viver Brasil's interconnected dances of attuning to earth, community, self and sky, the ensemble found its flow. For the second half of rehearsal, Delany guided the group through contact improvisation exercises to welcome in a key research question guiding this work: how can you offer a home for another, how can you offer another a space to rest? Tender, patient duets emerged from the study.
At the end of practice, we collected group words for reflection:
Play
Spirit
Rest
Calm
Stillness
Presence
Openness
Welcome
Hospitality
Presence
Weightedness
Connective touch
Breath
A sway
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