Session 1:  June-October 2023

 

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Tamara Williams is a native of Augusta, GA where she began her dance training at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School. Tamara participated in Georgia’s Governor’s Honors Program for dance during the summer of 2001, attended Philadanco’s summer intensive in 2004, and experienced Chicago during the summer of 2005 studying at Deeply Rooted Productions. She fulfilled two years in Dance Repertory Theatre at Florida State University under the direction of Lynda Davis. She earned her BFA in Dance from Florida State University, is a certified GYROTONIC(R) Trainer, Reiki Practitioner and Capoeirista. She received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University in collaboration with The American Dance Festival, The Forsythe Company, and Frankfurt University in Frankfurt, Germany. 

I am proposing a new project entitled, Long Memories; a performance work including dance, music and a digital installation honoring African American Ring Shout traditions and ancestry. The mission is to continue to share, preserve and celebrate African American history, culture and heritage, while telling narratives of African American through Ring Shout dance, contemporary movements, African hymns and oral traditions. 

 

 

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Renay Aumiller has presented choreography in festivals across United States, Sweden, UK, Canada, Pakistan, Serbia, Taiwan, and Italy as the artistic director/founder of RAD | Renay Aumiller Dances. She has received over 20 grants, scholarships, and awards for her choreography projects and is a published scholar in the areas of dance education and undergraduate mentorship in the performing arts. Renay has been invited to present her scholarship on inclusive and equitable practices in dance education at national and international conferences. Her education includes an MFA in Choreography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and BA in Dance Studies from UNC-Greensboro. She is Associate Professor of Dance at Elon University, a Franklin Method Educator, and Registered Yoga Teacher.

 

The proposed project develops creative methodology by integrating Adrienne Marie Brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds into my choreographic process to explore its effects on inclusion and belonging.  I plan to work in collaboration with Carrboro based sound designer, Clay Stevenson, and potentially with Winston-Salem based set designer, Charles Johnson, of whom I have both collaborated with on many projects. 

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Session 2:   January-May 2024

 

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 Joy Davis is a dance artist, advocate, educator and performer. She is a Senior Countertechnique® Teacher and Associate Professor of Dance at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she also serves as Dance Liaison with Career Services and Alumni Affairs. Joy founded joyproject in 2005 as a platform for creation, collaboration and production, having created numerous independent works, commissions for colleges and dance companies all around the US, and currently developing a residency program to support dance makers. Joy received an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College and has taught worldwide, including as a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, as a Guest Teacher at The Juilliard School, and at festivals including One Body One Career Countertechnique® Intensive,    American Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival.

My proposal for this residency is to devise work of dance theater organized around the central themes of birth and rebirth. Continuing from my Fall 2022 Goodyear Arts Residency installation “Ontogeny of a Mother: Becoming a Vessel”, which archived my experience with an ever-changing prenatal body, this project will follow as a series and will inquire into mythologies of birth, the significance of becoming a care-taker, and the humility of relinquishing oneself to another life. Centered through the lens of a postpartum woman, a mature cast of both men and women, actors, and dancers will travel to the underworld to shed personal armor and former identifications of self, ie: Sumarian myth of Inanna’s descent to and from the underworld, to allegorically illuminate the journey into birth, parenthood and why it takes a village to raise a child. 

 

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 Ramya S. Kapadia is a Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer, instructor and a Carnatic vocalist (South Indian classical dance & music forms). Ramya has toured all over the United States & abroad to present solo & group works. She regularly provides vocal accompaniment to dancers around the world and composes music for their productions. Ramya has Master’s degrees in Medical Physics and Neuroscience and pursues the arts full time now. She runs the Natyarpana School of Dance & Music in Durham, NC, through which she shares the rich traditions of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam across the USA. She is also the Associate Artistic and Outreach Director of Maryland-based Prakriti Dance. She shuttles Knoxville, TN where her family resides and Durham, NC, her main place of work. 

 

Proposal:  “Kama” in Sanskrit simply means desire. Desire is symbolically depicted by Cupid, who wields a sugarcane bow and five flower arrows. Kama senses deep-seated desires and shoots his flower arrows on his hapless targets who succumb to the potent effects of each of these flowers. The piece will be choreographed in the South Indian dance style of Bharatanatyam with six dancers from the Indian diaspora from around the United States.