Saturday November 7th, 2020

6PM – 7:30PM

Free with RSVP: https://tinyurl.com/y3ao76f7

This workshop will be hosted on Zoom. The Zoom code will be sent to those who registered the day of via email so please stay tuned for all info needed for logging in and accessing this event.

Please join us for a virtual workshop in association with “the body as a fever dream” curated by Dallas Fellini at 6:00pm on Saturday November 7th, 2020.

In this workshop, movement artist and RMT Danielle Smith will lead the group through a gentle reflective exploration of movement focusing on the element and physiology of water and fluid. There will be floor work as well as seated work. Participants can prepare by wearing comfortable clothing, have some water close by to drink, a mat or blanket to lay on, and a stool or something else to sit on.

This workshop will explore the cultural anatomy of the body and its physiology through a trauma-informed lens, inclusive of social, healing, and disability justice. The content and guidance that will be provided is intended for, but not exclusive to, BIPOC artists. We will consider resilience and its connection to ancestral memory, while traversing the possibilities between presence (embodiment) and absence within one’s own body as varied strategies of surviving versus creatively thriving; especially in response to a world that is struggling to fulfill the dream of a new foundation that no longer denies anyone nor leaves them behind.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR:

Danielle Smith is a Toronto-based movement artist and RMT with a multi-disciplinary focus. The first half of her RMT career centered on Sports Massage Therapy, and the last decade has focused on bridge-building between Healing Arts and Performing Arts with a focus on ancestral reclamation, body memory, and movement. The deep listening skills refined in her massage practice directly transfer to her body-based improv movement arts practice. As an artist focused on healing justice, Danielle’s practice spans from interventionist street performance addressing imperialist transnational violence in Toronto, Jamaica, and Colombia, to apprenticeship in the Arrival’s Personal Legacy Process, where she co-facilitated workshops throughout Canada, the Caribbean, and the UK. She worked with Chocolate Woman Collective as a Somatic Specialist facilitating trauma-informed body and movement work. She completed the Transdisciplinary Arts Program at Watah Theatre, producing performances based on d’bi anitafrika’s SORPLUSI methodology, alongside being the resident Health Care Practitioner and Anatomy Instructor. She completed the Luminous Bodies residency which focused on embodied ancestral research informed by her continued work with indigo as both a sacred plant and dye, and a lens to examine slavery’s aftermath. She is now a Master of Environmental and Urban Change Candidate (formally Environmental Studies) shifting her focus toward art and activism as a decolonial and indigenizing methodology.