Dancing Queerly

08/22/2024

Our fourth and final offering for Sunday's Q***r Beach Ball!

“Community Contemporary” is a class Angie has created and honed through her work with “The Click”. In this class, we will use contemporary movement as a way to tap into our body, mind, spirit, and community. Together we'll enjoy somatic and creative warm-ups, improvisational games, and phrase work (choreography) Angie always centers consent and autonomy in class. Regardless of your movement experience (or lack thereof), you are welcome to this class!

Angie Benitez (she/they) graduated from Salem State University with a B.A in Modern/Contemporary Dance and has since studied at Bates Dance Festival and continues to study with local Boston-based artists. Angie has immersed herself in teaching dance and performing in the Greater Boston area at local studios, schools, and residencies through organizations such as The Click, Human Movement Project, and at High Street Studios. Her recent performance experience includes local arts festivals and events such as Moving through March, Roots & Routes, Verse / Visual, 24 Hour ChoreoFest, Salem Arts Festival, and more. Much of her work is focused on collaboration and community. When she's not teaching dance, you can find her writing poetry, working as a social media strategist, creating fiber art, and meditating with her plants.

Image Description:

Angie, a purple curly=haired, latinx dancer wedges themself inside a rectangular sculpture, pressing their back against one side and feet against another. Their arm grips overhead as they gaze intensely towards the camera.
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08/21/2024

Introducing our third facilitator for the Q***r Beach Ball this Sunday!

Pampi will offer a community meditative dance song workshop and demo they call AbunDANCE: Meditative Dance Song.

Contribute to traditions of community chanting and moving to South Asian circular folk dance traditions as we q***r gender

AbunDANCE is designed to be a collective meditative dance song practice. AbunDANCE aspires to help us link our struggles for liberation within and across the world.

Come learn a practice for care and community in the face of the horrors of our world. AbunDANCE is rooted in anti-caste praxis. Buddha was anti-empire!

During our dance workshop we will work out and sing our own contribution to chanting culture and dance simultaneously with each other as a community, but also in solidarity with Palestinians, the people of Congo and Sudan, South Asian Adivasi Dalit and Bahujan peoples and minorities, and Black and brown people here in the US targeted by state violence.

Dance is inherently connected to our ability to show up to do liberatory work and stop violence. It brings us into our body and gives us the strength to hold ground.



Image Description

Pampi in red cotton long kurta with elephant print in black with satin black vest with silver pin dot embroidery over black fitted jeans with tuxedo detail made of tiny silver studs.

A 25+year newcomer-settler moving between lands stewarded by Wompanoag, Mattakeesett, Pennacook, Sokoki and Nipmuc peoples, Pampi is a darker-skinned nonbinary second-genx casteD-Bengali culture worker who plays at the intersection of healing and popular education: in community they develop community-centered art that releases creative potential and drives change-making. They lean on poetry, dance theater and gardening to help message the intersectional shifts in thinking we must embrace to center liberation. Current projects include Neighborhood Grow Plan, Diasporic Herbal Transmission, AbunDANCE: Meditative Dance Song, Movement into Meditation and We Are Forests.
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08/20/2024

Q***r Beach Ball offering number 2!

Come join Holly & Michael for an intro level American Foxtrot lesson with a gender–expansive approach, followed by an open social dance to practice what you’ve learned!

Image Description:

Holly and Michael pose facing the camera in matching black-and-white ballroom dance clothes.

Raised in rural Vermont, Holly Stone creates dance and theater in Greater Boston. Currently teaching at Tufts and Boston Universities, their recent gender-expansive partnering collaboration–INSIDER BALLROOM–with Michael Winward has been presented at the Providence Fringe Festival and the Dance Complex. Recent theater credits include CHICAGO for Ashland High School, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN for A Common Thread Theater, and ONCE UPON A MATTRESS with Greater Boston Stage Company. They have a B.S. in Bioengineering from Syracuse University and an MFA in Dance from Florida State University. As a performer, Holly has recently danced for Kathy Hassinger, Jo-Me Dance Theater, Lowell House Opera, and many others from their time in the American Ballroom Dance Industry.   

Photo:
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08/19/2024

The countdown to the Q***r Beach Ball begins! Time to introduce our first host, and workshop:

What is it like to dance with the land as a partner? A good relationship between dance partners cultivates understanding both of each other and of the self. The same is true when we dance with nature. In this intense time of climate crisis, developing personal ways of connecting with the land on which we live is a crucial step in the greater dance of healing and protecting the earth.

In this Letting the Land Lead workshop, we will explore the process of creating a dance with the land, first building a familiarity with our own movement and then using it to partner with the land and listening to how the earth communicates back to us. ALL are welcome in this space including folks with all levels of movement experience (even those who don’t consider themselves “dancers”) and any level of physical ability or disability.

Christopher Croucher (he/they) is an artist, performer and healer whose long-time practice of nature based spirituality is integral to his work in the world. His dance practice is rooted in modern dance and ballet, which he learned in his undergraduate years at Bard College, and his training in performance from the Glasgow School of Art, blended with his experience of ecstatic dance within his spiritual community. Over the last three years, Chris has developed an ongoing series of performances, workshops and retreats called Letting the Land Lead, which centers communication with the land as a way to educate and inspire climate action on a personal level. He is supported by Monkeyhouse as a member of the Vault Sponsorship Program as well as the Mass Cultural Council and the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Photo: Lindsay Hite

Image Description: A thirty-something white male dancer with shoulder length brown hair in a gray linen shirt sways with arms outstretched in front of the reflective water and reeds of a lake.
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08/13/2024

Q***R BEACH BALL!
Come join Dancing Q***rly and friends on Sunday, August 25th from noon - 5pm on Tenean Beach for an afternoon of movement and celebration! More info to come on the individual workshops, thank you to and for the funding to make this happen.
Image Description: Tenean Beach overlaid with the event details above and listed workshops.
12-1pm: Letting the Land Lead with Chris Croucher
1:15-2:15pm : Ballroom on the Beach with Holly Stone & Micheal Winward
2:30-3:30pm : AbunDANCE: Meditative Dance Song with Pampi
3:45-4:45pm: Community Contemporary with Angie Benitez

11/30/2022

Where: Start at Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square; end at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116

When: Gather in front of Boston City Hall Wednesday November 30th at10:45 pm.

11/29/2022

11/22/2022

Annual 24 hour
Vigil for Day Without Art/World AIDS Day

What: Days Without Art Healing Walk: Greater Bostonians of all backgrounds will join artists, dancers, musicians, friends, and collaborators in a procession from City Hall to the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama. There they’ll formally open SPOKE’s 30th Annual World AIDS Day art installation and vigil, marking the effects of multiple pandemics on our lives and our communities. City Hall will be lit red in honor of those lost to HIV/AIDS from dusk Nov. 30 until dawn Dec. 1. Participants will walk from City Hall, holding small bowls fashioned from newspaper obituaries and a 150 foot stream of red satin, evoking the AIDS Red Ribbon and the beauty of the thread of human connection.

Where: Start at Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square; end at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116

When: Gather in front of Boston City Hall Wednesday November 30th at10:45 pm.

Why: On Thursday December 1 SPOKE presents Days Without Art, its 31st annual World AIDS Day installation and vigil at the Cyclorama. This year's program is entitled Out of the Ashes, We Remember Their Names, a multimedia series of cultural actions that illustrate the healing power of human contact.

Days Without Art originated in 1992 as the "Medicine Wheel" installation in response to the ravages of the AIDS epidemic and the lack of official response. Each year since SPOKE has mounted a 24-hour vigil and art installation on World AIDS Day where people from all backgrounds come to remember, reflect, and grieve as a community while visual and performing artists present prayers, poetry and spoken word, dance, music, and ritual. This year’s Days Without Art installation will comprise more than 500 portraits of people we have lost to pandemics which will be installed at the Cyclorama alongside 25 sections of the historic AIDS/ Names Memorial Quilt, the only Boston venue for this unique work.

10/05/2022

GLOBAL. DIGITAL. DANCE. CONVENTION.
💥28 dance performances from LGBTQ+ artists from across the globe!

💥4 DANCE WORKSHOPS
✨Bollywaack with Kumari Suraj
✨Yoggaton with Maque Pereyra
✨Breaking the Binary with Bachata with Ace Fusion
✨Gender Affirming Yoga with Trans Yoga Teacher (Allé K)

💥DANCING ACROSS THE DIASPORA, a panel discussion
✨Kumari Suraj: Creator of Bollywaack, a q***r multi-ethnic creative director, choreographer, fashion designer, LGBTQ+ activist.
✨Maque Pereyra: Creator of Yoggaton, cuir Bolivian performance artist, DJ, and activist.
✨Tandile Mbatsha: performance artist, choreographic-activist, educator, speaker, host, producer, model and scholar based in Cape Town, South Africa.
✨Hosted by Cuauhtémoc Peranda: Two-Spirit Native American voguer, danzante, and Ballroom historian.

💥TRANS AND NON-BINARY FUTURES, a panel discussion
✨Jayla Rose Sullivan: Trans femme Showgirl and powerhouse on Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls
✨Sydney Baloue: Black and South Asian trans mac voguer, writer, and former executive producer on HBO Max' Legendary
✨Ace Fusion: Non-Binary Puerto Rican Bachata star, Dj / MC / Entertainer
✨Hosted by Sean Dorsey: iconic transgender contemporary choreographer
💥6 Networking Rooms: Dance as a Globalized Force, Living as a Dancestor, Uniqueness as Power, Dancing Beyond the Binary, Giving Trans Artists Their Flowers, Our Future is Interdependent–all of them serving entertainment, connectivity, and expanded conversation.
💥 Intergalactic Coming Out Day Booth + Living Ancestor/Dancestor Booths for deep diving into the Gaylaxy.

📆Sat. and Sun, October 8-9, 2022 from 10am - 2pm PT
📣ASL Interpretation and Live Captions
🛸ONLINE in the curated virtual space that we call, “The Gaylaxy.”
Get your tickets at www.dearq***rdancer.com/q***rdancecon
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