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.

SELECTED ARTIST | Chicago Takes 10

We were selected to contribute to Chicago Takes 10 a new virtual performance series sponsored by the Walder Foundation to provide support to performing artists and arts organizations who have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The series highlights diverse performance styles throughout the Chicago region, featuring local musicians, performers, and dancemakers. With Chicago Takes 10, we hope that artists and organizations will have a new platform to share their work with audiences here in the Chicago region and beyond.

SELECTED ARTIST | Pivot Arts Festival

Image by Karla Conrad

We have been selected to perform in the upcoming PIVOT ARTS Festival: Reimagining Utopia in Chicago, IL!

The Utopian Performance Tour is an in-person event where small groups of masked audiences will be led through spaces including video and art installations, animation, and theater and dance performances. This collection of artistic experiences was inspired by the theme of the 2021 Pivot Arts Festival, Reimagining Utopia. 

RESIDENCY 2020-2021 | High Concepts Labs

Image of Mana Contemporary in Chicago, IL where HCL is located.

We have been selected to be incubated artists at High Concepts Labs in Chicago, IL beginning in Fall 2020!

We are excited to join the community of artists at The High Concept Labs (HCL).

High Concept Labs (HCL) generously supports artists and facilitates dialogue between artists, audiences, and staff. This increases access and transparency to the artistic process and fosters transformational experiences in an environment of experimentation and discovery.

RESIDENCY | Philly/Detroit Trade School

We are excited to announce we have been selected to participate in Trade School 2020: Detroit!

Trade School 2020 will involve a collaboration between the Detroit-based A Host of People and The Philadelphia Thing who will organize a two-part exchange bringing together artists from Detroit and Philadelphia for residencies in Detroit and a festival in Philadelphia. Detroit residency sites will include A Host of People, Habibi House, Light Box, and more to be announced.

Trade School is the signature program of The Philadelphia Thing, a festival and exchange platform celebrating the work of Philadelphia performing artists, as well as creating connections with artist peers across the country. This event connects artists and audiences in each city, exploring differences and similarities in systems of support for contemporary performance, and discussing issues in self-producing and dissemination of work that resonate with both. Trade School features fully-produced performances, work-in-progress showings, artist-driven conversations, and a hosted program for visiting performing arts curators from across the country.

USArtists International Grant Awardee 2020

Photograph by Karla Conrad

We are so grateful to have received a USArtists International Grant through the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation to support our participation in the In/Out Festival in Bobo Dioluasso, Burkina Faso in February 2021.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (MAAF) has announced over $316,000 in grant support to 32 ensembles and solo performers who will represent the United States at 37 different festivals around the globe. USAI grantees will travel to six continents and perform in 21 countries. Grantees include 11 dance, 16 music, and five theater companies and solo performers.

RESIDENCY | The Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University

In October 2019 we received generous funding from The Studio for Creative Inquiry’s Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier — an endowment to encourage the creation of innovative artworks by the faculty, staff and students of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The goal of this fund is for the STUDIO 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.

After receiving funding, in November 2019, we were artists-in-residence with the STUDIO working on our upcoming project TRANSMISSION scheduled to debut at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) in May 2020.

TRANSMISSION is a project committed to interrogating, challenging, and works to dismantle systemic racism, sexism and heteropatriarchy in America. For this performance in relationship with CMU and KST, we will create actions that honor those impacted by the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting and the senseless murder of black people at the hands of police in Pittsburgh, including Antwon Rose II. We will work with environmentalists and Water Protectors to learn more about the confluence of Pittsburgh's rivers — Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio – waters that have brought people together for centuries. Landscape of the city is vital to our work. We always endeavor to bring the outside in and center our work in the place where it will live.