APRIL 23, 2021 | 8PM
Movement on Air
‘What is your truth?’ Seven artists from around the world in an evening of premieres.
Featuring:
Amikaeyla
Company | E with Robert J. Priore
Howard University Department of Theatre Arts performing the work of Royce Zackery
Movement Theater of Tbilisi, Georgia
Tuyet Thi Pham and Jennifer Knight
Boris Willis
ABOUT AMIKAEYLA
“My TRUTH is all about Hope and Resilience. Joy and Perseverance. Love and Endurance…For it is moments like these when we need to remember that we are all together, all connected, and all experiencing so many things in this extraordinary moment in time. A time when we need to muster all our strength, coral all our community to stand in action to our commitment to inclusion and belong by reshaping our powerful present – for we are in a time where we not only can make a difference, WE MUST.”
Proclaimed by NPR as one of the “purest contemporary voices”, and winner of eight Washington Area Music Association Awards, including Best Jazz Vocalist, Urban Contemporary Vocalist, & World Music Vocalist, Amikaeyla is the Founder and Executive Director for The International Cultural Arts and Healing Sciences Institute (ICAHSI) and a Cultural Ambassador for the State Department and Foreign Services Institute. She Is a Jazz vocalist, professional instructor, vocal producer, speaker, presenter, author, adjudicator, and educator with over 25 years of experience working with national and international universities, conservatories, and arts organizations. She tours internationally and has Professorships and Artist-In-Residencies in National (Music in Schools today and 5th Stream Music) and International Universities & Traditional Arts Conservatories in Azerbaijan, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, England, Italy, Paris, Spain, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Palestine, Pakistan, Ukraine, and Georgia just to name a few. She was the lead vocalist and co-artistic director for the 500 person Global Voice of the World Choir as well as the Artistic Director for the Living Jazz Children’s Project. She has collaborated, performed, and recorded with Goapele, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Angela Davis, Gil Scot Heron, Take 6, Pete Seeger, Baba Olatunji, Micky Hart, 2Baba, Salif Keita, Jean-Paul Samputu, Micky Hart, Esperanza Spalding, Sheila E, Bobi Cespedes, and many more. She is a professional vocal instructor, producer, arranger, and composer for several films for HBO, Sundance, and World Trust Social Justice through Film and Dialogue, and her studies of sacred ethnomusicology with traditional healers led to a commemorative performance for His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his personal request. She is the proud recipient of the United Nations Global Woman Award, the Voss Foundation Emerging Women Leaders Award, the Pioneer Award for Exemplary Leadership and Outstanding Service in Social Justice and Advocacy, and the International Hero for Peace and Forgiveness award.
ABOUT COMPANY | E
Robert J. Priore is very proud to be a founding member of 2011 DC based Company | E, where he has had the honor of dancing works by Ohad Naharin, Andrea Miller, Sharon Eyal, Rachel Erdos, Roni Koresh, Marco Cantalupo, and Thomas Noone. In 2015, Robert was a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project and created a special work, Speak Easy for the artists of Company | E. Speak Easy has been on the road, presented in collaboration with Company | E, in Russia, Azerbaijan. Cuba and most recently in Ukraine. Priore is also the Choreographer-In-Residence for the City Dance Conservatory program as well as an Ignite Artist. Robert received a BFA in Dance from Point Park University. Since 2010, he has been teaching Contemporary Dance at the highest levels of the School and Conservatory and his Choreographer-In-Residence works are directly linked to his mission of creating signature pieces for the Conservatory.
PrioreDance, Robert’s professional company was founded in the fall of 2016. In January of 2017, Robert traveled to Buenos Aires Argentina, where he facilitated a workshop at La Fábrica, and set and presented work for local professionals. In April of 2017, Robert traveled to Holguin, Cuba to set an original work on the dancers of CoDanza. He returned to Holguin in the fall with PrioreDance company member, Abby Leithart, to premier his work Casita with CoDanza at the Vladimir Malakhov Grand Prix, where the piece won the audience choice award. In July of 2018, PrioreDance was chosen to perform Casita at the Inside/Out Program Theatre during the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Summer Festival. That same fall, Robert and five dancers returned once again to Holguin to present excerpts of Ribert’s Cirque De Nuit for the Vladimir Malakhov Grand Prix performance.
Since 2016 Robert has been named an outstanding fellow in his home of the District of Columbia. In tandem Robert has received project grants since 2018 to create evening length works for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Most recently Robert was commissioned to create a work for the Mark Twain Prize Award Ceremony featuring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson from Broad City to celebrate the career of Julia Lous Dryfus. The ceremony was nationally televised on PBS in November of 2018. In 2019, Robert was awarded the prestigious Pola Nirenska Award for outstanding contribution to art in the District of Columbia.
Website: companye.org Instagram: @companyedance Facebook: CompanyEDance
ABOUT HOWARD UNIVERSITY DEPT. OF THEATRE ARTS WITH ROYCE ZACHERY
ABOUT MOVEMENT THEATER OF TBILISI, GEORGIA
Movement Theatre – a miracle place, where the stories are told by movement and music. Mystic “Mushtaidi garden” in the middle of Old Town Tbilisi, magic awaits you every evening. The Movement Theatre was founded in 2001 by Kakha Bakuradze (Director and Actor) and represents the synthesis of drama, pantomime, movement, and physical theatre, ballet, martial and circus arts, folklore, contemporary music, live music, Milonga tango evenings, Jazz evenings, comedy, illusion, extreme shows, and open-air and indoor performances.
Website: movementtheatre.ge/en Instagram: @movementtheatre Facebook: movementtheatre
ABOUT TUYET THI PHAM AND JENNIFER KNIGHT
“I think the project for me and the essential thread or theme of “what is your truth” brought me to ‘where does my story begin.” And for many of us, our truth runs through our ancestral blood; we are the embodiment of generational migration, integration, and growth. This distillation of a set of interviews I did with my parents illuminated the history of my parent’s journey from Vietnam to America that was once kept opaque. I hope that my short film inspires people to ask the questions they want from the people they want.” – Tuyet Thi Pham
Read more about Tuyet’s work in DanceMetro Theater Arts here.
ABOUT BORIS WILLIS
Boris Willis is the founder of Black Russian Games, Chief Artistic Officer of Boris Willis Moves, and an Associate Professor of Experimental Game Design at George Mason University. He has performed with Liz Lerman/Dance Exchange, Jacob’s Pillow’s Men Dancers, and Streb. He has created video art for choreographer Sharon Mansur and for his blog danceaday.com. Willis has an MFA in Dance and Technology from The Ohio State University, a BFA in Dance from George Mason University, and is a graduate of The NC School of the Arts. He is the recipient of a Kennedy Center Local Dance Commission and a Virginia Commission for the Arts Choreography Fellowship.
About the work
Jury Gon Set You Free is an anti-spiritual performance piece that takes the absurdist perspective of giving comfort to bad police who murder Black people, especially those people who are unarmed. Elements of the piece are created as a 3D video game to demonstrate the impermanence of this injustice and the need for creative solutions.
Website: boriswillismoves.com
Additional bios coming soon.