MIAMI — Miami Dade College’s MDC Live Arts has announced Live Arts Lab, a professional development opportunity for local working artists, with acclaimed dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire leading the inaugural laboratory, June 3 – 25 at MDC’s New World School of the Arts in downtown Miami.
SCHOLARSHIPS
The fee to participate in the lab is $350 and scholarships are available. The lab will culminate on June 25th with an informal showing where participants will share their research.
Chipaumire will also share excerpts of her new work-in-progress, rite riot. To register or for other information call 305-237-7733 or visit mdclivearts.org
First introduced to South Florida audiences during last year’s MDC Live Arts season, Chipaumire, born in Mutare, Zimbabwe and currently living in New York City, has been challenging stereotypes of Africa and the black performing body, art and aesthetic for the past decade.
In this lab, she asks participants to ponder how history, place, gender, race, class, language and globalization have marked their bodies.
“This research laboratory will help participants access their bodies’ original language and vocabulary, which will allow for the creation of singular, relevant choreographies,” Chipaumire said. “Through the body, through making with the body and performing with the body we can discover new modes of knowledge and understanding that are at once theoretical, experimental, critical, and practical.”
ATTORNEY TOO
Chipaumire, who has studied dance formally and informally in Zimbabwe, Cuba, Jamaica and the U.S., is a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe’s School of Law.
In addition she holds an M.A. in dance and M.F.A. in choreography and performance from Mills College. She is a 2012 Alpert Award in the Arts recipient and 2011 United States Artist Ford Fellow.
She is also a two-time New York Dance and Performance (aka “Bessie”) Awardee: in 2008 for her dance-theater work, Chimurenga, and in 2007 for her body of work with Urban Bush Women, where she was a featured performer for six years (2003-2008) and served as associate artistic director (2007-2008).
RECOGNITION
She also is the recipient of the 2009 AFROPOP Real Life Award for her choreography in the film Nora. She has been awarded the 2007 Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, and a MANCC Choreographic Fellowship in 2007-2008.
She has taught as an adjunct faculty member at Arizona State University-Tempe, Bennington College, the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis, and Barnard College.
Financed by the Knight Foundation and MDC, the Live Arts Lab residency aims to expose participants to the visiting artists’ creative process, best practices and intensive learning curricula, with an emphasis on creating new aesthetic works.
“This kind of training enables local artists to continue their education at MDC without having to enroll in a degree program,” said Kathryn Garcia, director of MDC Live Arts.
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