Thursday Jan 16
7:30pm-9:30pm Community Class
9:30pm-11:00pm After-Party
Diaspora is a complex word that signifies both place and displacement, connection and disconnection, memory and futurity. This dance class seeks to translate these ideas into the body — how can we embody principles of Latin & African diasporic dance practices while exploring our own unique expression? How can we simultaneously embrace rigor and instinct, tradition and creativity, ancestry and individuality? The class frames these seemingly disparate ideas as complimentary and necessary for a collective practice of dance-and-change-making. Dancers are encouraged to cultivate an intimate relationship with the ground, a mobile spine and expressive pelvis, playful improvisation, and deep musicality.
All bodies and levels of experience welcome. Come ready to sweat and play!
Cash & Venmo donations encouraged at the door.
Marina Magalhães is a border-crosser, bridge-builder, and dance-and-change-maker from Brazil based in Los Angeles. Her work is centered around diasporic decolonial notions of the body as a crossroads where the individual meets the ancestral, memory meets futurity, and spirit meets flesh. She has shared her work throughout the US, Brazil, Cuba, Botswana, South Africa, Germany, and France earning her an LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Choreography. Magalhães is a graduate of UCLA’s World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department, where she earned her B.A. degree, and University of the Arts’s Dance Department, where she earned her MFA degree. She is currently a Lecturer at UC Riverside, a Resident Choreographer with Viver Brasil Dance Company, a Resident Artist at Pieter Space, and founder of the Dancing Diaspora platform now going on its 3rd year with the support of California Arts Council. marinamagalhaes.com
This is a FREE community class thanks to generous support of the California Arts Council, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.