Celia Weiss Bambara is an American dancer, choreographer, and scholar, and artist in residence with the Makeda Thomas/Roots and Wings Movement Dance and Performance Institute. During the final phase of her residency, she has been living and working at Alice Yard.
On Thursday 25 March, at 8.00 pm, Weiss Bambara will perform a new site-specific work-in-progress at Alice Yard. She writes:
“Choreographic and improvisational ideas have a way of growing, shifting, and changing. I had originally intended to present a new improvisation at Alice Yard and discuss a bit about some of current working methods. Two things altered this improvisational path.
“Firstly, upon arriving at Alice Yard, I became entranced with the contours of the space and energies at work in the nooks and joints in between structures. Each one of these spaces seems to have a set of layered histories, and I began contemplating a site-specific work that would engage these spatial dynamics and energies.
“Secondly, I was confronted with the actuality of daily violence in Trinidad, and realised that I needed to process my reactions through my own corporeality and movement. In the US, I had been working on a set of ideas for a new piece, which addresses the cyclical and intergenerational nature of violence. Some of the questions that I have been asking are: How does grand-scale violence precipitate daily violence? How do we stop cycles of violence on our bodies? Can we find a moment of non-violence amidst daily violences?
“Research that correlates these ideas, experiences, and space will be shown as work-in-progress at Alice Yard. Aiybobo!”
All are invited.
About the artist:
Celia Weiss Bambara is co-artistic director of the CCBdance Project, an African-based contemporary dance company formed in 2006 with Burkina Faso-born Christian Bambara. She has danced for JAKA in Port-au-Prince and Martin Dancers in Los Angeles, among others. Between the late 1990s and 2003, Weiss Bambara worked with artists in Port-au-Prince on projects that combined Haitian, modern/contemporary, and other African diasporic dance forms. Her choreography and the work of the CCBdance Project have also been shown in Los Angeles, Chicago, Iowa, Michigan, Cuba, and Jamaica. She holds a PhD in dance history and theory/critical dance studies from the University of California, Riverside, and is currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
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