FRFF Grantee | The Studio for Creative Inquiry

In February 2023 we received generous support from the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund (FRFF): an endowment to encourage the creation of innovative artworks by the faculty, students and staff of Carnegie Mellon University. With this fund, The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry seeks to develop a cache of groundbreaking projects created at CMU — works that can be described as “thinking at the edges” of the intersection of disciplines. Since the fund’s inception in 2012, the STUDIO has funded more than 400 projects by CMU faculty, staff, and students.

This funding will support our upcoming travel and exhibition "LA VILLE EN MOUV'MENT | Art in the Street" debuting in Dakar, Senegal in June 2023.

Performance Review | Constructing Memorials in Bodies, Site and Sounds

WE WILL NOT
WE WILL NOT
WE WILL NOT BE CONTROLLED

I AM SOVEREIGN IN MY BODY
I AM SOVEREIGN IN MY SOUL

This incantation, sung together by artists and audience, began Call her by her name: Lenape Sippu (translated as “the river of the Lenape people”), a work-in-progress by Propelled Animals. The date was June 24, 2022, the day when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I decided an outdoor performance by the river was a potential balm for an otherwise devastating day.

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We Will Not Be Controlled - YouTube. Written by The Bengsons and posted on June 24, 2022. Many others have posted themselves singing it, including Adrienne Maree Brown, who inspired the addition of the incantation on the evening of this performance.

USArtists International Grant Awardee 2022

We are honored to receive a USArtists International Grant through the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation to support our participation in the “La Ville En Mouv’ment” Festival in Dakar, Senegal in June 2023.

Mid Atlantic Arts has announced grants totaling $381,510 to 29 solo performing artists and ensembles in support of the second round of USArtists International (USAI). The artists represent 10 states and will travel to 35 different festivals and arts markets around the globe. The grantee pool includes the first engagement in Cabo Verde and the first USAI artist from Puerto Rico.

Published Article | University of California Press

Read our article DIS/UNITY to learn about how our collective embeds innovative and provocative art in unconventional spaces and how we are committed to creating work that interrogates, challenges, and attempts to dismantle the systemic “isms” of oppression. Our work is centered on art as social action and ritual as performance and we root our work in sound. From collage and remixed news clips, hip-hop, gospel, rap, and Indigenous R&B tracks to recordings of bird calls, wind, and rain, sound fuels their immersive work—as an invitation and a provocation.

SWITCH SIGNAL Film Premiere

“In our film, SWITCH SIGNAL, we pay respect to the city of Pittsburgh, by heeding Mister Roger’s call to slow down and direct our attention.”

— Raquel Monroe

Get your tickets now!

Photography by Beth Barbis

National Performance Network (NPN) Documentation & Storytelling Fund Awardee

We are Summer 2021 Documentation and Storytelling Fund recipients!

The National Performance Network (NPN) awarded $57,000 and leveraging an additional $154,000 to nineteen Documentation & Storytelling projects. NPN’s Documentation & Storytelling Fund aims to create pathways for artists’ career advancement and to support their ability to document, promote, and share their work, ideas, and selves.

Through these projects, artists will consider the intersection of pandemic and protest; celebrate the contributions of Black women and gender-nonconforming artists to the fields of experimental dance and avant-garde art. One project will compile a show book of musical notation and storytelling that celebrates Native peoples and culture, another aims to provide collaborators with promotional and submission materials that show their practice. Many incorporate lessons learned during the pandemic, translating works to film or hybrid forms to complement their in-person versions or building an archive with which collaborators can reflect on their practice in these changing times.

The NPN Documentation & Storytelling Fund is made possible by generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. 

FILM PROJECT | Kelly Strayhorn Theater

SWITCH SIGNAL Creation Residency

SWITCH SIGNAL is a site responsive film rooted in the technologies of imagination and mindfulness taught by Pittsburgh’s beloved Mister Rogers. Conjuring the absent presence of community during the global pandemic, this work is about listening. Propelled Animals will be in residence at KST to create this film, May 30 – June 13. They will move, march, and be present creating choreographies, music, and rites as a love letter to Pittsburgh.

Propelled Animals 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. The creative team includes: Esther Baker-Tarpaga (Philadelphia), Barber (Detroit), Heidi Wiren Bartlett (Pittsburgh), Raquel Monroe (Chicago), and Courtney Jones (Boca Raton).

This project has been made possible with the generous support of a MAP Fund Grant.

National Performance Network (NPN) Artist Engagement Fund Awardee

Our project SWITCH SIGNAL, a creative production residency with the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, has been approved for support by a National Performance Network (NPN) Artist Engagement Fund.

The National Performance Network (NPN) is a vibrant network of artists and organizations committed to advancing racial and cultural justice through the arts. We are a national service organization that believes artists and cultural organizations are essential for creating a just and sustainable world. We believe communities deserve broad access to art and culture that reflect their own experiences and inform about the experiences of others.

Through our programs, we provide cultural workers resources needed to develop and tour new work that advances racial and cultural equity; to ensure arts leaders have the skills and opportunities to be global change-makers; and influence cultural policy for more just and artist-centered practices.