Location: Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center
Time: 5:00–10:00 PM

“Celebrating Collaboration & Community” is the third of three events. 

Admission is free. Reservations required.

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Schedule:

5:00–6:00 PM: A conversation with Shamell Bell about the 28-Day Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation and the community-led improvisational methods of “co-choreographic praxis.” Street dance activism community organizers, guides, and artists will participate.
6:00–7:00 PM: Reception with food and drink.
7:00–10:00 PM: Ahmad DuBose-Dawson will lead Everything Raw, a three-hour freestyle collaboration with community partners including Yoda Jones; a live band with USC Thornton students invited to sit in; live art/painting with USC Roski students invited into the flow; and space to linger and build break-out cyphers.

Bios:

Shamell Bell is a homeschooling mother, community organizer, critical-engaged-pedagogist-educator, dancer/choreographer, and documentary filmmaker. An original member of the #blacklivesmatter movement, she is also a full-time lecturer of somatic practices and global performance at Harvard University and instigator of street dance activism and global dance meditation for Black Liberation.

Ahmad DuBose-Dawson is a professional percussionist, producer, and recording artist whose music style is a kaleidoscopic expression of Traditional African, Afro Cuban, World Music, Hip Hop, and Jazz. DuBose-Dawson is the leader of Everything Raw, an emerging free style platform for L.A.’s dance and live music community with emphasis on the relationship of live dance and live music creation, improvisation, and the infinite possibilities of what can be achieved when raw energy is exchanged.

d. Sabela grimes, a 2014 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, is a choreographer, writer, composer, and associate professor of practice at USC Kaufman, whose interdisciplinary performance work and pedagogical approach reveal a vested interest in the physical and meta-physical efficacies of Afro-Diasporic cultural practices. Considered one of the most imaginative and innovative artists in his field, grimes created and continues to cultivate a movement system called Funkamentals that focuses on the methodical dance training and community-building elements evident in Black vernacular and Street dance forms.

Born in New Orleans and raised in Southern California, Yoda Jones was surrounded by musicians, singers, and artists of all styles and cultures from a young age. Since beginning with classical Indian dance at the age of 6, she has learned house, locking, waacking, popping, Hip Hop, vogue, Chicago footworking, and anything funky, free, and grounded in soul, and studies and dances with pioneers, teachers, and dancers worldwide.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by artistic lead and curator d. Sabela grimes (Dance). Co-sponsored by the Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs and La CASA.

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