Red Clay Dance

Performance: REST.RISE.MOVE.NOURISH.HEAL

Thursday & Friday, July 24 & 25 at 7 pm, Patricia Nanon Theater, The Yard.

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Work-In-Progress Showing of Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar

Friday, August 1 at 7 pm, Patricia Nanon Theater, The Yard.

In Residence July 21-August 2

REST.RISE.MOVE.NOURISH.HEAL is a site-responsive dance ritual:a journey towards collective healing and reclamation of our spiritual and ancestral relationship to the land. It was developed in relation to the urban farm, ART ON THE FARM in Chicago’s GRANT PARK, a space stewarded and designed by Erika Allen and Urban Growers Collective. Sanders-Ward visioned this work as "a practice, a process, an uncovering of the beautiful labor of bringing us ALL home to land, reclaiming ancestral cultural traditions, technologies, and tools that can lead to individual and collective healing."  More specifically, REST.RISE.MOVE.NOURISH.HEAL explores how people of color have been disproportionately affected by food apartheid and the racial disparities in black farming.  It’s an artistic approach that addresses the known inequities and structural racism that exist in the food system and in communities of color by reclaiming and activating time-honored Black/African-Indigenous traditions and technologies that support spiritual fulfillment and physical well-being for people of color. This work supports a DECOLONIZED practice that centers these traditions, technologies, and tools as foundational and righteously healing. This will be the first time staging this work in a theater setting. 

Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar is an interdisciplinary project designed to envision a utopia of freedom for Black women and girls. This immersive work will serve as a sanctuary for their stories, blending dance, song, digital media, and built environment to create a profound and resonant experience. The project will feature choreography/direction by Vershawn Sanders-Ward, music by Jamila Woods, costumes by Shaqui Reed, visual elements by Scheherazade Tillet.

ABOUT THE COMPANY: Red Clay Dance, Chicago’s premier Afro-contemporary dance company, is the brainchild of Vershawn Sanders-Ward, the institutions’ Founding Artistic Director & CEO. The touring company is an award-winning ensemble of versatile and dynamic dance Artivists that tour and perform locally, nationally, and internationally. In its 16-year history the company toured and performed in venues such as the Harris Theater for Music & Dance, Dance Center of Columbia College, the DuSable Museum Roundhouse, the Museum of Contemporary Art, ODC Theater, Dance Mission Theater, The Painted Bride, Joyce Soho, and the National Theater of Uganda. Committed to taking their signature Artivism in Motion from the stage into learning environments, their community engagement work is a vital part of the company’s creative process and village building work! 

Website: https://www.redclaydance.com/

Red Clay Dance’s Yard residency is funded in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project and the Jerome A. and Estelle R. Newman Assistance Fund.