FILM WORKS is a three-part screening series celebrating films and videos by artists connected to Philadelphia experimenting with movement and the body. Our work SWITCH SIGNAL will screen on Sunday, April 21 at 7:00pm alongside a fantastic line-up!

Cognatus : Britt Fishel and Artists
Switchback Swan Song : Saskia Globig
The Road is Long : Ella-Gabe Mason
And Eat It Too (I always do the dishes right on time) : Julia Bryck, Kayla Bobalek, & Maddie Hopfield
Office Best Practices : Rose Luardo and Emmett Wilson
S'kin to SKIN : Meredith Rainey
SWITCH SIGNAL : Propelled Animals

Curated by Kelia Cordova. 

Check out the Leah Stein Dance Company Website to learn more.

Note: Procession begins at Freedom Greens + Garden (5200 Pine St), proceeds down 52nd Street, and finishes at Painted Bride (5212 Market St).

Learn more on the Painted Bride Art Center website.

Schedule

• 1:00 – 1:20pm: Event begins at Freedom Greens + Garden (5200 Pine St, in front of the school and across from Malcolm X Park) – Garden Storytelling with Tchin

• 1:20pm – 2:30pm: Procession down 52nd Street, finishes at Painted Bride (5212 Market St)

• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Neighborhood clean-up with Ya Fave Trashman

• 2:30 – 4:00pm: Dance party, performances, and chair massages at the Bride

Lenape Sippu: Call Her By Her Name is a window display, soundscape, and performance that will take place in and around the West Philly neighborhood surrounding Painted Bride. On Saturday, April 20, 2024 the window display will be the backdrop for a performance that will take place in the neighborhood surrounding 52nd Street SEPTA station and Painted Bride. Dancers, line drummers, musicians, storytellers, and performance artists will process to the Painted Bride space where they will be met with music, a dance party, free chair massages, and performances.

This piece will shed light on histories of Black and Indigenous communities who have lived and worked on the southern portion of the Delaware River. Delaware River is a colonial naming of this river and Lenape Sippu is the name of this river.

As a part of ‘’La Ville En Mouv’ment’’ les Arts dans la Rue we will also be performing in Palmarin, Senegal at the Palm Festival organized by Bigué Ndiaye in collaboration with Fatou Cissé. This performance will build on our previous performance in Ouakam. It will feature site-responsive performances and installations created in collaboration with Senegal-based artists. The performance will be a procession through the village of Palmarin.

PROPELLED ANIMALS: Esther Baker, Barber, Heidi Wiren Bartlett, Boubacar Djiga, Raquel Monroe
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR: Bigué Ndiaye
ARTIST COLLABORATOR: Bamba Diagne
STRUCTURE COLLABORATORS: Now Association
GUEST PERFORMERS: Baye Cheikh, Pape Cheikh, Khadi Ba, Mix Baba, Rokhaya Coulibaly, Mbaye Faye (Prince)

MADE POSSIBLE WITH GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM: Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon University, and Headlong Dance Theater

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Dans le cadre de ‘’La Ville En Mouv’ment’’ les Arts dans la Rue nous nous produirons également à Palmarin au Sénégal au Festival de la Palme organisé par Bigué Ndiaye en collaboration avec Fatou Cissé. Cette performance s'appuiera sur notre précédente performance à Ouakam. Il présentera des performances et des installations adaptées au site créées en collaboration avec des artistes sénégalais. Le spectacle sera une procession à travers le village de Palmarin.

ANIMAUX PROPULSÉS: Esther Baker, Barber, Heidi Wiren Bartlett, Boubacar Djiga, Raquel Monroe
DIRECTEUR DU FESTIVAL: Bigué Ndiaye
ARTISTE COLLABORATEUR: Bamba Diagne
STRUCTURE DES COLLABORATEURS: Now Association
INTERPRÈTES INVITÉS: Baye Cheikh, Pape Cheikh, Khadi Ba, Mix Baba, Rokhaya Coulibaly, Mbaye Faye (Prince)

RENDU POSSIBLE GRÂCE AU GÉNÉREUX SOUTIEN DE: Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon University, and Headlong Dance Theater

We will perform in ‘’La Ville En Mouv’ment’’ les Arts dans la Rue featuring new site-responsive performances and installations created in collaboration with Senegal-based artists. The performance will be a procession through Marché de Ouakam in Dakar. We are focused on recycling, upcycling, protest, cross-cultural social and artistic discourse, and environmental justice.

PROPELLED ANIMALS: Esther Baker, Barber, Heidi Wiren Bartlett, Boubacar Djiga, Raquel Monroe
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR: Fatou Cissé
ARTIST COLLABORATOR: Bamba Diagne
STRUCTURE COLLABORATORS: Now Association
GUEST PERFORMERS: Baye Cheikh, Pape Cheikh, Khadi Ba, Mix Baba, Rokhaya Coulibaly, Mbaye Faye (Prince)

Nous jouerons dans ‘’La Ville En Mouv’ment’’ les Arts dans la Rue avec de nouvelles performances et installations adaptées au site créées en collaboration avec des artistes sénégalais. Le spectacle sera une procession à travers le Marché de Ouakam à Dakar. Nous nous concentrons sur le recyclage, l'upcycling, la protestation, le discours social et artistique interculturel et la justice environnementale.

ANIMAUX PROPULSÉS: Esther Baker, Barber, Heidi Wiren Bartlett, Boubacar Djiga, Raquel Monroe
DIRECTEUR DU FESTIVAL: Fatou Cissé
ARTISTE COLLABORATEUR: Bamba Diagne
STRUCTURE DES COLLABORATEURS: Now Association
INTERPRÈTES INVITÉS: Baye Cheikh, Pape Cheikh, Khadi Ba, Mix Baba, Rokhaya Coulibaly, Mbaye Faye (Prince)

Join Performance as Public Practice (PPP's) Fridays@2 speaker series for a conversation with us!

The Performance as Public Practice Fridays@2 speaker series facilitates discussions about the creation and study of performance. PPP welcomes artists from within and beyond the Winship Drama Building, including current students, distinguished alumni and arts leaders from across the country, to share their research and methodology. Up next is a conversation with Propelled Animals - a group of artists, dancers, scholars, musicians and designers, including faculty member and Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Academic Affairs Raquel Monroe.

Friday, June 24 at 5:30pm at Cherry Street Pier

This site-responsive performance, featuring Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Barber, Raquel Monroe, and Courtney Jones will take place at Cherry Street Pier next to Lenape Sippu—one of the Lenape names of the Delaware River, a colonial naming. This hour-long performance will explore the themes of water, reciprocity, and time. The live action event integrates dance, live music, durational performance actions, and temporary installations in the large pier space and outside next to the river. Audience members are encouraged to move through and around the space and engage with the performers.

This July the Schuylkill Center welcomes us for a two-week performance-in-residency. The group ─ consisting of collective members Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Raquel Monroe, and Heidi Wiren Bartlett in collaboration with guest artists Tchin, Crux, and Emma White Thunder ─ will explore collective knowledge and systemic practices in environmental justice, anti-racism and healing lineages grounded in the body. 

The performance project UNLOCK: Tree Water Land builds on the urgent contemporary movements of Black Lives Matter and WATERisLIFE. It includes dance, ephemeral interactive installations, live music, and guided embodied experiences for audiences to witness and join in. The residency is part of the collective’s multi-year effort to creatively decolonize natural spaces through visual art and dance; and ultimately their attempt to dismantle the systemic oppression of contemporary ‘isms.’

The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
July 26 – Aug 6, 2021
Organized by Tina Plokarz

Register here!

Wednesday, June 9, 10:00am – 11:30am
Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media, Scaife Building | 1047 Shady Ave.
Workshop participants will meet on the flat, large lawn in front facing Shady Ave.

This class is offered as a part of STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos Contemporary Styles Company Class.

Join us for in a site responsive meditation and movement workshop focused on listening and observing your environment to create short, generative choreographies. This workshop is for artists of all backgrounds, abilities, and disciplines – dancers, visual artists, activists, filmmakers, musicians, etc. – who are interested in expanding their creative practice through embodiment and site-responsive gestures.The class will begin with a meditative grounding exercise, leading to movement, dance, ritual, and outside exploration. Creatives invited to discover the collective’s interdisciplinary approach to problem solving. The practice will take place outdoors so please dress accordingly. Wear comfortable shoes that you can move in and bring water.

Order a Kelly Strayhorn Theater Eats Tana Dinner Box and join us on Zoom to help welcome us to Pittsburgh! Our cohort will join the KST community to share our creative process during the pandemic and discuss our new film project SWITCH & SIGNAL staged at Kelly Strayhorn Theater and around Pittsburgh.

Get your tickets here.

Join us on Zoom for an Artist Talk with us, the members of the Propelled Animals collective. We were scheduled to have a 14-day residency including performances of our work TRANSMISSION with Kelly Strayhorn Theater for the 2020 edition of the newMoves Contemporary Dance Festival. Instead, due to COVID-19, we will be giving an artist talk so you can get to know us as individual artists and members of our collective. KST is planning to work with us to reschedule this engagement for the future.

TRANSMISSION is a site adaptive work centered on art as social action and ritual as performance. Through kinesthetic, sonic, visual, and aural experiences we, Propelled Animals, offer a restorative space to counter traumas inflicted by systemic injustice. We are a collective of artists, dancers, scholars, musicians, and designers, bringing communities together for performances that honor nature, foreground radical tenderness, and deliver strategies for self-empowerment. Our creative team for this project includes: Esther Baker-Tarpaga (Philadelphia), Barber (Detroit), Heidi Wiren Bartlett (Pittsburgh), Papa (Ouagadougou), Dr. Courtney Jones (Boca Raton), and Dr. Raquel Monroe (Chicago).

Our artist talk is made possible with support from The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Kelly Strayhorn Theater is a Partner of the National Performance Network (NPN). This project is made possible in part by support from the NPN Artist Engagement Fund. Major contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information visit www.npnweb.org.

Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Raquel Monroe, and Heidi Wiren Bartlett will be in residence July 21-28, 2019 as part of Call & Response 2019. We will create a series of collaborative performances in response to the site and particularly to Folayemi Wilson’s installation, Eliza's Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities. Through movement, creative processes, and continuing dialogue about interracial friendships, specifically between Black women and white women, we will create interactive dances and rituals. While onsite, we will co-host a dinner gathering with Evelyn Patricia Terry and participate in the Call & Response Family Free Day.

DIS/UNITY: An Invitation, an 80-minute site-adaptive interdisciplinary performance project, will be performed at the University of Northern Iowa on Saturday, September 15 after debuting at Grinnell College the night before. The event is free and open to the public and will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Strayer-Wood Theatre as a part of the Vertigo Performance Series.

This presentation is supported by the University of Northern Iowa and Jeffery Byrd, Department Head for the School of Art.

DIS/UNITY: An Invitation, an 80-minute site-adaptive interdisciplinary performance project, will be performed at Grinnell College on Friday, September 14. The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Room 154 of the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, 1108 Park Street, Grinnell. Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project is an award-winning transnational dance theatre project based in Philadelphia, PA and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. We, the Propelled Animals are an interdisciplinary artist collective centered on arts and social justice. Artists involved in this project include: Barber (Detroit), Esther Baker-Tarpaga (Philadelphia), Heidi Wiren Bartlett (Pittsburgh), and Papa Djiga (Ouagadougou). Our backgrounds range from dance, visual and performance art, to music and the written word. Our work is centered on art as social action and ritual as performance. Encouraging audiences to consider the efficacy of the body, resilience, protest, and radical tenderness as strategies to fight oppression.

This presentation is supported by the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest that is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional contributions from the Center for Humanities, Center for Prairie Studies, Public Events, and the Crane Group.

The Englert Theatre presents DIS/UNITY : A Service, a new performance-based installation that will premiere on Saturday, June 18 at 8 p.m. at the Deadwood Tavern, Second Floor.

Co-commissioned by The Englert Theatre, Dis/Unity is an in-the-works performance created and performed by an interdisciplinary team of artists united to confront racism through art. Featured artists include: Esther Baker-Tarpaga (Philadelphia), Duane Lee Holland (Philadelphia/Boston), Raquel Monroe (Chicago), Heidi Wiren Bartlett (Iowa City) and Barber (Detroit). The project is focused on race and abolitionism through the lens of pop culture, queer aesthetics, dance, and visual art. Performances address trauma, liberation, and transcendence through sculptural installations and audience interaction.

The world premiere will be staged at the Englert in Fall 2017.

This project wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of The Puffin Foundation, The University of Iowa Department of Dance, Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project, and Andre Perry, Executive Director of the Englert Theatre, and co-commissioner of this project.