Episode Notes: Okwui Okpokwasili - Body Power
Added 2020-03-20 17:47:20 +0000 UTCEpisode Title: OKWUI OKPOKWASILI - BODY POWER - Watch / Listen
Description: Can dance and song offer insight into a performer’s experience, even across race and gender? In this episode, Laura interviews MacArthur Genius Award winning choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili about her groundbreaking experimental work to communicate the lived experiences of African and African American women. Okpokwasili explains how she uses movement, gesture, and character play to bypass audiences’ preconceived notions and bring visibility to identities rendered invisible by mainstream culture. (ep#286)
Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:
•Dance As World-Changing Movement: Alice Sheppard and STREB
•What Is A Risky Change? Kimberle Crenshaw & Eve Ensler
•Raising Vibrations Against Gender-Based Violence
•Adrienne Maree Brown: Pleasure Activism, and Black Women’s Legacy of Joy
•Restore, Renew and Reparations
Related Articles and Resources:
•The Intimate World of the Performance Artist - The Atlantic
•Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born: Sitting On a Man’s Head-Danspace Project
•Okwui Okpokwasili - BOMB Magazine
Guest Bio:
Okwui Okpokwasili, choreographer and performer
Okwui Okpokwasili received a B.A. (1996) from Yale University. Her performance work has been commissioned by the Walker Art Center, Danspace Project, Performance Space New York, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, the 10th Annual Berlin Biennale, and Jacob’s Pillow, among other institutions. She has held residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Rauschenberg Foundation Captiva Residency, and New York Live Arts, where she was a Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist. She is currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Read More
Featured ‘Music in the Middle’ of the Podcast:
“Sam’s Song” by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born from Okwui's debut album Day Pulls Down the Sky. More Information
