SAKAFU 2023: Repertory Performance Works
Thursday and Friday, December 14 and 15, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $15 General Admission
Free for Columbia College Chicago Students
Welcome cultural ambassador of New Orleans tradition and Second Line Aesthetic, Michelle Gibson to Chicago and the Dance Center! Recently debuting at Jacob’s Pillow and serving as Grand Marshal for the Ascona Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Michelle Gibson’s original choreography will share the stage with works choreographed by Umfundalai practitioner Bevara Anderson, former Mordine & Company Dancers Dardi McGinley-Gallivan and Pam McNeil, choreographic agent of change Dr. Ayo Walker, and Lucky Plush’s Meghann Wilkinson, all performed by the kinesthetically fluid students of the Dance Center.
Photo by Julie Lucas, for Columbia College Chicago.
About the Artists
Bevara Anderson, photo by William Frederking.
Bevara Anderson is a professional dance artist from the Maryland coast. Ms. Anderson focuses on the embodied research that lives within Umfundalai, house footwork, Horton, contemporary ballet, improvisation, and many other contemporary movement styles. Anderson is now rendering dance work based in narrative, abstraction, meditation, and continues to consider the experience of joy as a form of resistance in the Black American community. Bevara is of the final generation of dancers to study under the direct tutelage of Dr. Kariamu Welsh, and holds this feat with pride as she continues to share Dr. Welsh’s technique, Umfundalai.
Michelle Gibson, photo by: William Frederking.
Michelle N. Gibson is a consummate storyteller, employing body and mind to build a bridge between the culture and academia, but most importantly, humanity. On stage and in the classroom, Gibson intricately intertwines Black African American dance traditions, choreography, and associated scholarship linking the vibrant heritage of New Orleans through the Caribbean to the vast expanses of Africa, evoking the social, political, economic, and spiritual understandings central to building bonds within and across cultures. This journey, steeped in both tradition and innovation, encapsulates Gibson’s unwavering commitment to heal the world through the culture.
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan, photo by William Frederking.
Dardi McGinley-Gallivan is a Professor of Instruction in the Dance Department who specializes in Pedagogy and Modern Technique courses. Dardi is a founding member of Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak Dance Company, performed for Mordine & Company Dance Theatre, and Colleen Halloran Performance Group (live and dance for camera). She received the Louis Sutler Prize for the Arts as an undergraduate and a Ruth Page Award in Chicago for Performance. Dardi has a long history of teaching residencies for Antares Danza Contemporeanea in Hermosillio, Mexico and recieved two Faculty Development Grants to facilitate projects with Antares company member, Isaac Chau.
Pam McNeil, photo by William Frederking.
Pamela McNeil has been teaching at the Dance Center and been active in the dance community as a performer, teacher, and choreographer for the past 30 years. After dancing professionally in New York, where she trained extensively in Hawkins Technique and worked with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, McNeil moved to Chicago and joined Mordine and Company Dance Theatre with whom she performed for over nine years. She has presented her work at The Field, DIA Art Foundation, and Aglaia Middle Collegiate Church in New York, at Wellspring in Kalamazoo, MI, and in Chicago at Links Hall, and at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.
Ayo Walker, photo by: William Frederking.
Dr. Ayo Walker is a Performance Studies Practitioner, Choreographer, and Dance and African American Studies Educator. As an anti-racist educator, her praxis is committed to substantiating the techniques, vernaculars, and genealogies and embodiment of historically marginalized and othered dance aesthetics. Her work is rooted in visibilizing the “blood memories,” “aesthetic of the cool,” and the “get down” qualities evident in Africanist and Black dance aesthetics. Employing social justice choreography representative of anti-essentialist movement that is at once exposing and undoing stereotypical assumptions historically signifying the Black body politic, her works challenge what performing Blackness is and isn’t.
Meghann Wilkinson, photo by William Frederking.
Meghann Wilkinson has been an ensemble member with Lucky Plush Productions since 2004, where she has originated roles in over a dozen devised works and has toured the country and abroad. She has also performed with Mordine and Company Dance Theater and The Neo-Futurists and has choreographed for Walkabout Theater, Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Cecchetti Council of America, and Evanston Dance Ensemble. Working toward regenerative practices for people and planet, Meghann has participated in Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute, attended immersive programming at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and completed certificates in permaculture design with Midwest Permaculture and Earth Activist Training with Starhawk.
Support
Michelle Gibson’s visiting artist residency is made possible in part by Alphawood Foundation.
