Explore a selection of the amazing our Dance Series previous performances and guests!

Dancer in mid-air with words, "Street Dance Activism calling all artists, activists, academics, dancers, headers, humans."

Street Dance Activism’s Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation

2021-2022 Season

A Collective Conversation with Dr. Shamell Bell,Dr. grace shinhae jun, ‘Amelia Leafaitlulagi and more

Street Dance Activism’s Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation is a series of 28 days of embodied meditation and movement sessions led by Black, Indigenous, People of Color + Queer guides from multiple wisdom traditions and healing practices. The offering is intergenerational and embracing of all abilities; all bodies are welcome. We ask everyone to take part in the universal shift that only comes with true Black liberation. Black liberation is your liberation and your liberation is Black liberation. By reading these words you are already vibrating with us.


 

Two dancers with arms outstretched upwards.

Marjani Forté-Saunders and 7NMS Residency

2021-2022 Season

Imagining Liberatory Movement: A Conversation, A Game, A Study, A Process, A Meeting, An approach to Making Dances. Prayerfully, an approach to "Shaping Future" with Marjani Forté-Saunders and 7NMS.

In Marjani's own words: "I'm honored to join you in Appleton, WI, to connect with your stories, your pasts, and your visions/wishes for the "Next/Now" (- playwright Sharon Bridgeforth & jazz Scholar Omi J. Jones ph.D.). Aaaaah... "The Role of the Artist" (James Baldwin) to pull together the fragmented pieces of our lineages, our sustenance, and our dreams to imagine paths forward. After the protests end, the pandemic subsides, the institutions/applications/stages re-open... what kind of stories will you be telling? What kind of art will you make? What might it reveal about where we come from, and who we are becoming? Please join me, in making and unveiling some blueprints together, as we envision our paths forward. Together we'll explore the body, mind, and metaphysical as one organic unit. A container of memory, story, culture, inquiry, and empathy to be ignited by movement and meditation, in this Imagining Liberation Session, an embodied meditation."


 

Gabriel Forestieri and Loren Kiyoshi Dempster float in the water while performing “Breathe,” a water opera.

BREATHE - A multi-disciplinary water opera

2018-2019 Season

Created by Gabriel Forestieri 
Music by Loren Kiyoshi Dempster 
Written by Adrian Jevicki

This unconventional performance combined light puppetry, projections, swimmers, divers, dancers, actors, musicians, and singers to create an unforgettable experience. Using a cast of students, athletes, performers, and professionals, underwater dancing and floating choirs mixed with a soundscape composed directly from the space itself. A play on dimensions of air, water, and light, that blended and signaled through all these possibilities of sound, space, and depth. Photo credit: Virginie Sueres. Learn more about the performance. 


 

Other past Dance Series performers:

  • Lower Left
  • Miles Pertl & Leah Terada
  • Anandita Neogy Anaam
  • Set Go
  • Indah Walsh Dance Company
  • Dahlia Nayar
  • Stephanie Nugent
  • bkSOUL
  • Malkia Stampley-Johnson & Lanette Costas-Stampley
  • Jon Mueller & Dawn Springer
  • Marion Ramirez & JungWoong Kim
  • Dolphin Dance Project 
  • Tatyana Tenenbaum
  • Gabriel Forestieri
  • Uncucumbered
  • Kate Corby & Dancers
  • Rebecca Bryant & Don Nichols
  • Kristina Isabelle Dance Company
  • Aparna Ramaswamy
  • Rebecca Salzer Dance Theatre