CURATORIAL PROJECTS
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Evolution Solo Weekend (2012 - 2018)
An education platform for the social dances of the African diaspora, popular in the European dance communities. Project’s goal is to raise awareness about the cultural diversity of social dance genesis, by educating on the roots, origins, and historical development of the dances of African diaspora from a decolonial perspective. The platform host workshops, a festival, online and in-person education lectures, social dance events and music concerts throughout 6 years in Russian, Ukrainian, and Western European cities. Bringing together artists of African diaspora as well as local ones, the platform opened the space for community education and celebration of the fundamental values of social dances: individual expression within the collective, communication through creativity and celebration of diversity.
artists
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Annelys Perez Castillo (Cuba)
afro-cuban dance
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Thomas DeFrantz (USA)
african american studies
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Dennis Adu (UA)
jazz, trumpet
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Sasha Mashin (RU/IT)
jazz, drums
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Yunisky Ruiz (Cuba)
percussion
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Josette Wiggan (USA)
jazz, trumpet
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Daria Koshkina (RU/USA)
graphic design
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Jean-Charles Zambo aka Joyss (FR)
authentic jazz
Frankie Martinez about Evolution Solo Weekend:
“This to me is one of the most intelligent concepts, one of the most intelligent realizations that I didn’t even have until I came here: of connectivity in disciplines, in musical disciplines and dance disciplines. Because you have to kind of dig dip to understand how this stuff is threaded together, how it’s all combined. And to bring them together into a single arena and to have people partake in them together at the same time, communities that wouldn’t necessarily cross each other; and to actually demonstrate to ourselves and to the audience the connectivity of these things, like the historical connectivity of these things, it requires an analysis that I think is extremely intelligent. And I just want to say that: I’ve never seen like this in the world in terms of this line of connection. Somebody stumbled onto this line, extraordinary. I think it’s absolutely remarkable, what’s happening here.”
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SOUND from the Cat's Corner (2016 - 2022)
A lectorium about the history and theory of dance. Born at Kyiv’s AmIJazz? Festival at Closer, within the education program ЗВУК (SOUND) in 2016, it has been evolving along Alina’s doctoral research on post-colonial and performance studies at the University of Barcelona’s department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature.
Through its numerous online and in-person activities, the project offers (mostly, to its European public) a convenient and accessible way of learning about dance and performance studies, and the history of social dances, and underrepresented dance practices.
Calling out the underpinnings of critical theory, cultural, dance and performance studies, the course sets a goal of shedding the light on the anthropological importance of dance, and provoke a critical thinking around issues of social and political importance that dance and performance brings to our epistème.
do you know that there is an archive of online lectures available?
there are more than 20+ hours of the research material we produced during the pandemic times, 2020-2021. to access them, you can become a patreon member:
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