How does one navigate a field with competing and often obscure roadmaps? How can we dig back, be present and innovate forward, all while being attuned to change; shape shifting as necessary? In this keynote address, Ronya-Lee Anderson guides a call-and-response style dialogue in which BlackLight Summit guests will investigate possible routes together.
Presented in Partnership with Dance Place
What does it feel like to live uninterrupted? For so many marginalized groups within the United States the ability to move through the country unencumbered is a rare privilege. Be it the over-policing of Black and Brown communities; the surveillance of citizens deemed a threat due to religious beliefs, or even the ability of female-identifying people to walk home without being physically/verbally/sexually accosted. In this panel discussion, we ask ourselves: what is the possibility of safety and peace for those that society has categorized as the “other”?
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Reflections on the American ideas …
notions …
beliefs …
privileges of place, belonging and ownership through the lens of subjugation countered by acts of survival, resistance, urgency, creativity and self-determinism.
Presented in Partnership with Dance Place
Opening night of the BlackLight Summit features two mid-career BIPOC dance artists with a strong connection to the DC Metropolitan Area. Following the presentation of digital works by these artists, they will join BlackLight Summit artists Candace Scarborough and Jamal Abrams as well as BlackLight Summit Guest Panelist Aisha White to discuss works and the themes of the Summit: amplifying unfairly silenced voices through action.
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While in the midst of their strengths and struggles millennial and Gen Z artists of color have managed to continuously spin straw into gold. But, to what end? In this panel discussion, we will have a conversation about how an unstable economy and social upheaval have fostered circumstances in which building a lasting career in the arts is full of risk with no guarantee of reward.
For rising generations of creatives, is the choice to be an artist a pathway to a thriving sustainable legacy or a continual uphill fight for legitimacy…or both?
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In this keynote address, Executive Artistic Director of Dance Place and internationally acclaimed dance artist Christopher K. Morgan and Executive Director of The Dance Institute of Washington and visionary arts activist Kahina Haynes share their perspectives on honoring and continuing legacies. Their address focuses on addressing inherited legacies in a shifting arts and social justice ecology, while also considering the impact of their own work on the communities they serve. The session will include ample time for questions and topics submitted via chat from viewers.
Faculty, students and guest choirs come together for a concert celebrating Black History Month curated by the School of Music’s IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access) Committee and in partnership with the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA).
Between 1960 and 1980, Venezuelan architect and folklorist Oswaldo Lares recorded more than one thousand tracks of rural folk songs around Venezuela. He captured genres and singers rarely known outside their regions that would later become emblems of Venezuelan folk when Lares’ work was gradually released on vinyl. Today, Lares’ collection is safeguarded by a new generation within his family, led by his son Guillermo.
