Year: 2024-2025
DanceForce Member: Glenna Yu
Artist: Raven White
Community Partners: Bushel Collective; Delaware County Pride; Pillow Fort Arts Center
Audience: 45
County: Delaware
Pillow Fort Arts Center is hosting dance/performance collective BIRDHOUSE for a week-long residency and will offer a free movement workshop on Sunday, June 30th at Bushel Collective, daily open rehearsals throughout the week and a Work-in-Progress showing on Saturday, July 6th at Pillow Fort Arts Center.
On the first day of the residency (Sunday, June 30th), BIRDHOUSE director Raven White will lead a free, open-level movement/improvisation workshop at Bushel Collective. In this workshop, Raven will lead the group through a series of meditational movement improvisations. She will invite each person to accept themselves and reunite their mind and body. Through culture and our lives we are taught that our bodies are shameful and that you must only move as you are told. Raven cultivates a space in which humans can move with freedom even within these oppressive structures.
For the rest of the week, community members are invited to join the collective for their morning improvisational session at the dance deck at Pillow Fort Arts Center from 9-11am Monday, July 1st through Friday, July 5th. These improvisational sessions are a core part of BIRDHOUSE’s creative practice and will explore similar themes as from the workshop. Community members are free to drop in for whichever days they can and are encouraged to join for multiple days over the course of the week.
For both the workshop and the open rehearsals, people are welcome to observe if they do not wish to participate.
The daily open rehearsals will be followed by creative time for BIRDHOUSE, where each member of the collective will create a small piece on the rest of the collective. The residency will culminate in a public showing of what BIRDHOUSE created during their residency, hosted on the outdoor dance deck at PFAC on Saturday, July 6th.
Pillow Fort Arts Center is excited to partner with Bushel Collective to host the workshop and bring more dance events to Delaware County. 40-50 audience members are expected to attend the various events over the course of the week. As both the workshop and the open rehearsals are improvisation-based, they are accessible to all bodies and levels of ability.
This residency will be BIRDHOUSE Collective’s second residency in upstate new York and will grant BIRDHOUSE over 40 hours of creative time to create new work.