February - April 2024
"Town Hall" is a project with the goal to engage the San Diego dance and movement arts community to artfully
illuminate and archiving stories of individual local movement artists, dancers, choreographers, administrators, and community members
name the triumphs and challenges of the current local dance ecology
design a path forward that activates and interconnects the community
support individual and collective action and accountability
Far South/Border North is a program of the City of San Diego through Arts and Culture and its regional partners, including Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties, San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition, and The San Diego Foundation. The program is funded through the California Arts Council Creative Corps with additional support made possible by The Conrad Prebys Foundation.
"Town Hall" will take place in 3 parts:
1) collecting and processing stories
I will collect stories from individuals in the community through:
an online survey-style format that allows for written, verbal, or visual contributions that illuminate your experience as a member of the San Diego dance community. There will be some prompts to respond to, as well as opportunities for open ended reflection.
a one-on-one dialogue and movement exchange. In an attempt to more deeply understand your dreams and concerns for our local community, I'd like to sit with you, hear your stories, and have an opportunity to thank you for sharing in a movement-based reflection practice. (This is meant to be a creative listening/sharing practice, and is not intended as therapy.)
Community members are invited to participate in one or both of these story collecting components with options for their contributions to remain anonymous.
2) "Town Hall" gathering
This 2-day event will take place on April 13 & 14 at the Sherman Heights Community Center, and will serve as our opporunity to come together to experience the stories that have been collected, share in group formats, move and witness together, brainstorm, and commit to individual and/or collective actions we can take to positively impact the local dance landscape. This gathering will include components of sharing, reflecting, dialoguing, movement, as well as action plan development.
3) action and accountability
We will leave the "Town Hall" event with actionable plans and systems for accountability. In addition to other mechanisms of support that we can devise together, I will serve as your cheerleader, and follow up with individual community members and groups to chart movement towards action over the remainder of 2024.