Year: 2023-2024
DanceForce Member: Elena Mosley
Artists: Alvin Ailey II Company; Tatiana Desardouin; Marcus McGregor; Dan Safer; Taganyahu Swaby
Community Partners: CREATE Arts Council, Operation Unite NY, Hudson City Library, JCinetime LLC, Yaad Wellness Center
Audience: 646
County: Columbia
Renaissance Dance Across Bridges connected communities through movement, music, social awareness, and cross cultures. Renaissance began when the Alvin Ailey II Dance Company traveled up to Hudson, NY and presented a panel discussion with John Campbell of JCInetime LLC and Masazumi Chaya, former Associate Artistic Director, prior to the showing of the “Ailey” documentary. The next evening, Ailey II company presented two youth workshops and a performance at the Hudson Area Library. On July 27th the library’s Community Room overflowed with families and children spilling out onto the floor. It was an amazing event for Hudson and well received by an audience of 200. Community partners were John Campbell of JCineTime LLC, Tracy Robinson of the Hudson Area Library and Operation Unite NY/Kuumba Dance and Drum. This event kicked off the Bridges Project with patrons asking for their return.
Tatiana Desardouin and Passion Fruit Dance company brought community dance workshops to Hudson with a pre-planning workshop in 2022, two workshops in the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024 in partnership with DanceForce member Ivan Sygoda. Sygoda’s 2023-2024 residency project included community partner Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, with workshops were held at the Hudson Area Library. Sygoda’s Passion Fruit Project supported the performance at Kaatsbaan.
We crossed over to the Greene County side of bridge to support a new work by the ongoing collaborative team of Marcus McGregor and Dan Safer. They continued the trajectory which began with “The History of Empires”, a two+ year project started early in the pandemic that premiered at La Mama in NYC in 2023.The two embarked on developing a second work, fusing and contrasting their respective backgrounds in contemporary ballet and downtown dance/theater. McGregor and Safer created a unique, highly theatrical dance pieces crossing multiple boundaries by dedicated a week-long session in October of 2023, which culminated in a public work in progress showing of the new work at Hudson Hall on November17th to an audience of 125 patrons.
Taganyahu Swaby has studied Capoeira Angola, a dance form that has origins in Central and Western African and was developed in Brazil by captures African and indigenous Brazilians as a means of liberation from oppression. For the last two decades Swaby has traveled and lived between New York and Salvador training Capoeira Angola Society and continues to teach in the Hudson Valley and in Brooklyn. Swaby shared teachings through movement workshops, accompanied with traditional music in Hudson and Catskill, NY. On July 21st, 2023, Tagan presented a Capoeira workshop for all ages at the Hudson Area Library. On October 14, Taganyahu gave a lecture on the origins of Capoeira and its commitment to liberate the oppressed at CREATE Arts Council in Catskill, NY. A Capoeira Roda community gathering incorporated participants of his workshops at the Yaad Wellness Studio in Catskill, NY and a second Capoeira Roda in Hudson on Friday, August 11th, at the Hudson Riverfront Park. Local and Brooklyn community members who live the teachings of Capoeira were present.