A weekend of conversation, performance and resource on rooting identity.
With
Alexis Convento
Camilo Godoy
Dom Chatterjee / QTPoC Mental Health
Evelyn Lillian Sánchez Narvaez
iele paloumpis
Kris K.Q. Pourzal
Jana Lynne Umipig
+ more
Programming happens throughout the day, come and go as you please. Materials are provided for all workshops and activities; guests (that’s you!) are encouraged to participate, however, you can decide how much you’d like to. All bodies and all levels of experience/curiosity is welcome to join. There will be a comfort room at the back of the theater as well as the community garden across from the venue, should you need a moment to connect back to yourself when needed.
The CURRENT SESSIONS hopes to build an inclusive and available space for participants and guests alike to feel safe and secure throughout the process. We do not tolerate inappropriate behavior or harassment of any kind — especially to our POC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and all other marginalized bodies / guests — and will ask those who do not respect the space and the people within it to leave the venue. Please respect the Community Agreements on-site and ask questions, we’re here to support!
SCHEDULE — Saturday, August 18
11:00am – 8:00pm
Reading Corner [RESOURCE]
Browse books selected by participants and on the theme of “HOMELAND.” Contribute to and take home reading and resource lists.
11:00am – 1:00pm
Communal Space [RESOURCE]
Do what you want, do what you feel. Theater space is open for those who’d like the space to try things out, whether than be a small choreography, spoken word / poetry reading, a meditation or stretch — it’s up to you. Message organizer Alexis Convento at alexis@thecurrentsessions.com if you’d like to join and to hold space.
1:30pm – 2:30pm
Locating Identity [WORKSHOP/ACTIVITY]
with Alexis Convento
Both an individual and collective act of (re)discovery, expression, and storytelling through hands-on activity and conversation. Participants will be guided through simple collage techniques to make and take home a self-portrait. We will then connect our creations and the processes that we took to our identity and upbringing, the culture that affects us, as well as the theme of “HOMELAND.” Open to all experiences and interests.
3:00pm – 4:00pm
SHE WHOSE NAME I CAN NOT SAY [PERFORMANCE]
with Evelyn Lillian Sánchez Narvaez
As an opportunity to fight for the clarity of my past via my current life perspective, I attempt to create a safe space that allows my dangerous travels back in time, palpable. Through storytelling and cleaning, I dig into the shadows that continue to hinder my divine growth and understanding of love and compassion. I respect the tumultuous/difficult episodes of my upbringing by facing them with courage in such a manner that the lessons within them do not go to waste. This is a work in process performance with real time discovery. If you dare hold space for me, why not dare hold space for yourself?
Note: A breathing / meditation moment will be embedded at the end of this performance as a way for folx to be with themselves among community.
4:30pm – 6:00pm
Choreographic Studies [WORKSHOP]
with Camilo Godoy
Choreographic Studies is an archive by artist Camilo Godoy. This archive is comprised of visual representations of sexual gatherings and dances depicted in objects created in different historical moments with a focus on non-Western and Ancient art. In Workshop: Choreographic Studies participants will engage with this archive using object-based inquiry, writing and movement. Participants will explore movement to develop their own movement phrases. No background in dance is required and all types of bodies are welcomed.
6:00pm to 8:00pm
Re-visit [CONVERSATION/GATHERING]
A chance to reconnect and share learnings from the day and to talk about how these new practices can be applied to our daily lives.
SCHEDULE — Sunday, August 19
11:00am – 8:00pm
Reading Corner [RESOURCE]
Browse books selected by participants and on the theme of “HOMELAND.” Contribute to and take home reading and resource lists.
11:00am – 12:00pm
tilting towards Black fire, one one one [(SPECULATIVE) PERFORMANCE]
with Kris K.Q. Pourzal
This work orbits around a speech that my mom wrote when she was 17 years old in Baltimore, Maryland. In response to a requirement that graduating seniors give a speech to the entire school, my mom spoke about the discrimination she and other Black students had experienced there, demanding that the administration do better. I knew nothing of this story until a year ago, although it turns out a hardcopy of the speech had been sitting in the attic above my childhood bedroom all along. In this performance, I animate the speech as something around and within which we can gather and speculate, leaning into and tilting towards Black fire. A soft introduction makes way for a swelling invocation of the text. (“Tilting towards Black fire” is a phrase I heard Thomas F. DeFrantz use in his workshop afroFUTUREqu##r in July 2018.)
12:15pm – 2:15pm
Process: In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky [CONVERSATION/WORKSHOP]
with iele paloumpis
“When something irrevocably disappears, leaving a ghost in its wake, what emerges out of that loss? I [iele] intend to explore this question through the lenses of historical violence and disability justice.”
Artist iele paloumpis and collaborators Marielys Burgos Meléndez, Krishna Washburn, and Marýa Wethers open the research process to guests through conversation and a collective movement practice. During this session, we will share the differing experiences that are held within the body, including: the impacts of political violence on our bodies and how intergenerational trauma informs embodied experience; and the “home” of a body, and what it means as it changes over time. Learn more about In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky at The Chocolate Factory.
2:30pm – 4:30pm
The Body as Homeland [CONVERSATION/WORKSHOP]
with Dom Chatterjee / QTPoC Mental Health
Through group discussion and embodied meditation, we’ll explore the body as a site of self, of community, and of ancestral knowledge and behavior. How does our body serve to map and navigate the larger, less familiar world? And how can experiencing the body as a homeland provide a sense of comfort and security, a refuge to return to between confronting the great unknown? This conversation will serve as a catalyst to continue asking these questions in our day-to-day lives. The aim is to share tools to ground in the body and unearth the wisdom of our physical home.
Learn more about Rest for Resistance / QTPoC Mental Health.
5:00pm – 6:00pm
Wayfinding: Charting the Path For Your Descendants to Re-member [CONVERSATION/RITUAL]
with Jana Lynne Umipig
A decolonizing practice integrating ritual that is developed to vision and create a guide for our Descendants, so they might be equipped to understand how we acknowledge the necessity to be in awareness of the physical world and also of spirit as a way of life, that is embedded, that is intertwined, that IS our existence.
As we begin our paths of performing our divination work in public, how do we navigate the hypocrisy, of a capitalistic world that has invested in spiritualism as a means of production? How do we return to spirit as a way of life and not just practice in response to a traumatic existence? Particularly here on Turtle Island also known as the North Americas — with the United States at the center, where the foundations of our settlement and occupation of land (despite the conditions in which we arrived) were built upon, and compounded on top of the truth of genocide, slavery, and the destruction not just human life, but all life. We will create sacred space of acknowledgment and honoring, and hold a circle of reconciliation, while creating visual maps of how we have navigated and made space for ancestral and spiritual survival, for our descendants to re-member us by.
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Breaking Bread [CONVERSATION/GATHERING]
Breaking Bread is a chance to encourage one-on-one conversation with others around a table. Prompts on the theme of “HOMELAND” will be dispersed throughout the venue, light beverages and snacks will be provided.