Movement for Movements/Movimiento para el Movimiento with El Pueblo
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Movement for Movements/Movimiento para el Movimiento Workshop - El Pueblo - May 2021
Photo by Roderico Y. Díaz
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In May, as a part of Culture Mill's residency with NC State Live, Culture Mill co-directors Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan, restorative justice practitioner Val Hanson, and poet/activist CJ Suitt taught a workshop series called Movement for Movements/Movimiento para el Movimiento with El Pueblo. Conceptualized in collaboration with the advocacy organization, which serves the Latinx community in Raleigh and the surrounding areas, the workshop series, which was taught in both English and Spanish, explored two different understandings of the word “movement.” By linking Restorative Justice practices with physical exercises that embody distributive power amongst a group of diverse individuals, the sessions focused on building community with others who are active in movements for social justice while listening to and caring for the bodies of all involved. The workshop included physical exercises, poetry, and skills for cultivating community - ultimately focusing energy toward resilient and sustainable action.
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Culture Mill Co-director Murielle Elizéon serves on NEA Panel
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"Having received two NEA grant awards in the past few years for our work with Culture Mill, it was such a privilege to be able to join the Grants for Arts Projects Dance Panel for the 2020 grant cycle. This experience gave me a profound insight into the richness and complexity of dance in the US choreographic landscape, and an even deeper appreciation for the depth of commitment Sara Nash and the whole NEA dance division put into the process of grant making. I was also especially humbled by the grant discussion and panel review where each voice and perspective was uplifted until we found an agreement and made an appropriate decision."
- Murielle
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What's been happening at the CM LAB?
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Traditionally, the Culture Mill Lab has served as an important place for gathering in our role as a community-focused Arts Laboratory. In the current season we have had to refrain from holding large gatherings in our physical space due to COVID-19. Yet the Culture Mill Lab still serves a vital function. The lab currently operates as an office, a staging ground for our virtual programming, and (as a part of our Open Space Policy) a location for creative folks to practice, create, and dream.
This past month Dreama Caldwell/Down Home NC, and members of Culture Mill's Parkinson's Programming team (Tommy Noonan, Murielle Elizéon, Danny Cowan, Annie Dwyer, and Leah Wilks - along with collaborators Carol Vollmer and Cathy Moore) each spent time in the Lab. Here are some of their words about what the time and space meant to them:
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"Sitting on porches and planning...Down Home's Co-Director Dreama and Field Director Vicente talking strategy!"
Photo by Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Down Home NC
"This was the first Down Home NC management meeting since Dreama Caldwell, Alamance local, joined as co-executive director. Down Home NC is a new organizing project led by the working people of North Carolina’s small towns and rural communities. Together, we are taking action to increase democracy, grow the good in our communities, and pass a healthy and just home down to our grandbabies. We are so grateful for the use of the Culture Mill space, and spent our time in the lab strategizing about how to build power for small town and rural NC's working and poor communities."
- Down Home NC Team
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Photo by Tommy Noonan
"I arrived at the Culture Mill lab early realizing that this was the first time in over a year that I would be able to explore in an open space maskless and in the presence of other maskless movers and explorers. It was a breath of fresh air to see faces and feel the fullness of friends. The five of us spent four days “body storming” which is a physical form of brainstorming coined by Murielle. We warmed up our bodies in a simple practice and set about exploring breath, pathways in and out of the floor, rotation, and contrasts in the quality, size and speed of movement. Our movement investigations began from personal solo explorations punctuated by recording collected remnants of our questions and discoveries on large sheets of paper in the center of the room. Over the course of several days we excavated deeper into questions about vision, skin, and shifts of weight as potential material for future classes for the Dancing with Parkinson's project. On day four, we were joined by two collaborators from our Parkinson's working group - the air in the room was electric with the energy of all of our layered practices coming to life in conversation with one another. More questions flowed into the space and a common vocabulary began to emerge as we each brought a piece of our truth forward through the movement.
It is amazing to me what can emanate from a single question when I engage with others in moving while listening to my body and when I allow seemingly tangental but actually essential ideas to float through the laboratory space. Tommy & Murielle have a way of shaping an experience so beautifully that the careful underpinnings of the design remain invisible. Our shared investigation of what it means to be confident and aware of your movement choices was a nonlinear journey into creative conversance. I left the lab filled with the richness of the experience and infused with excitement as I navigated the torrential downpour on my way back to Durham."
- Annie
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