Open Level Movement workshop:
a body language – a vowel – a homecoming
2023/6/17
2-5 PM
Join us on Saturday, June 17th, from 2-5 pm for the Open Level Movement workshop "a body language – a vowel – a homecoming" led by Marsell Anhel Chavarria and Yilin Ye.
Have you ever felt yourself moving once you are situated in a new environment? Novelist and Video artist Kang-He suggested that “Dialects are the cohesive agents of one’s self” (方言是自我的凝合剂). How are we also embodying our home and experience through bodily dialects?
During this adventure, we will explore how dance, text, sound, spoken words, and environment welcome the journey to one’s home. These various mediums will shape how we embody the process of discovery. Laughter, fear, sweat, farts, and acceptance can just be some of the essential ingredients for someone’s story. How will your history echo through your physical and vocal movements?
Starting from our body, we will unpack how our body acts as a vessel carrying our past, to exist in the present, and progress toward the future.
Regardless if you are ready or not, prepare to take a chance with yourself. Dance with a community, immerse yourself with materials and architecture, express your inner creature through writing, doodles, or even weird sounds, and be courageous to say, “Hmm, I’ll taste that!” Come along this adventure and be a part of this delicious hotpot art experience.
Note: It is essential to emphasize consent, boundaries, and respectful touch throughout the workshop, ensuring a safe and comfortable environment for all participants.
Marsell Anhel Chavarria, artist and community practitioner looking at his Latinx and African American heritage to enforce his responsibility to share dance and movement. He is drawn to use movement, especially contact and whispers, as a way to process difficult transitions and encourage self-reflection. Anhel holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in Dance and Choreography. His choreography and dance film work have been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, John F. Kennedy Center, International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference, and YUZ Museum Shanghai. In his position as a teaching artist practitioner in dance for BuildaBridge International, Anhel serves to provide art-making to trauma-informed communities as an invitation towards empathy, creativity, and hope for programs involving staff, faculty and students. He hopes to share the beat of his drum and some chocolate with you soon.
Positionality of the organizers:
To celebrate, to rebel, to listen, to support, and to eat are a handful of actions we hope to foster through our upbringing in dance to process inevitable systems of marginalization and work within populations across cultures, generations, and ability. The areas of dance we play most in include social, urban, and improvisation. Hopefully by facilitating spaces where dance can focus on collective storytelling, we can challenge the exploration of humanity and respect of the human condition. Yilin Ye’s and Marsell Anhel Chavarria’s hearts drums in this lifestyle so we dream constantly towards the growing body of knowledge in dance and movement to spotlight others.
