On the Boards presents Solo: A Festival of Dance with co-curator Dani Tirrell
Solo: A Festival of Dance explores the solo as a rebellious act of self-expression.
The 2020 Solo Festival will feature an evening-length program that includes performances from five solo artists; Jade Solomon Curtis, Jumatatu Poe, Adrienne Truscott, Marianna Valencia, and Allie Hankins. The artists will explore how the solo has the capacity to create both a personal and a political narrative, and how one body in the space can still create a deafening gesture.
In addition to these regularly scheduled performances, there will be supplemental programming co-curated by local choreographer/dancer/movement guide and 2019 Solo Festival performer, Dani Tirrell. These masterclasses and community discussions will happen throughout the On the Boards space. Tirrell and Artistic Director Rachel Cook hope these programs will broaden the conversation about the profound individual exploration and exquisite vulnerability a solo work requires from the creator and the performer. Check On the Boards’ website for more information on these programs.
Cook had this to say about her personal interest in the solo as an art form, “Solo voices in our culture are being forced to perform testimony about what has happened to them and their bodies. The solo performance is particularly relevant during a political moment when so many lone voices have been silent and are being pushed to come forward in order to be heard and seen”.
About the Co-curator
Dani Tirrell is a black, queer choreographer, dancer and movement guide. Dani has guided people in Detroit and Seattle as well as sharing movement practices in other cities in the United States. Currently Dani is the curator for the 2019/2020 season of Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas, this is Dani’s second season as curator. Dani is the host and co-creator of Sunday Dinners. Dani is the founder and current artistic director of The Congregation a movement/art group. Dani is currently teaching at Northwest Tap Connection and University of Washington Seattle campus and Bothell campus (fall 2019). Dani has created work for Dance This (Northwest Tap Connection), Strictly Seattle (advance/professional track), Seattle Repertory Theater, Nina Simone Four Women (Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton).
In August of 2019, Dani received Seattle’s Mayor’s Arts Award. Dani is the Artist in Residence at Velocity Dance Center (2020/2021) and one of 6 Artists in Residence at On the Boards (Seattle, WA) Dani also was at the helm of four sold out shows, for Dani’s production of Black Bois (On the Boards). In 2019 Dani was the recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship Award and a Dance Crush Award for Black Bois (performance). Dani also received a 2018 Arts Matter Fellowship grant. Dani current work FagGod in collaboration with Anastasia Renee and Naa Akua was presented in Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas 2019/2020 season.
About the Artists
Jade Solomon Curtis is a choreographer and dance artist who integrates African-American vernacular movements with mixed-media, contemporary dance and Hip Hop cultural influences. She is the founder of Solo Magic, a non-profit arts initiative collaborating with innovative artists to create socially relevant multisensory performances; “Activism is the Muse”.
Curtis received her BFA from Southern Methodist University and is a recipient of the 2018 NEFA National Dance Project Award and Production Residency Grant for her work Black Like Me: An Exploration of the Word Nigger, a 2018 Artist Trust Fellow and a 2017 University of South Carolina Inaugural Visiting Fellow. Curtis received the 2017 Seattle Office of Arts & Culture CityArts Project Award and the 2017 4Culture Artist Project Award. Her work has received support from the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Artist Trust, Central District Forum for Art & Ideas, and 4Culture (Tech Specific Grant). Curtis is a 2017 Velocity Dance Center artist-in-residence, a 2018 Base Experimental + Art artist-in-residence and a 2019 SLIPPAGE Lab at Duke University artist-in-residence.
A celebrated soloist of Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theater for four seasons, Curtis is the subject of an Emmy Award-winning short film, Jade Solomon Curtis directed by Ralph Bevins. In 2016, Curtis was selected to tour Cuba as part of Common Ground Music Project; and her solo, “Emancipation” was produced as part of the landmark exhibition, Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic. Her solo work has also been commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum and the Northwest African American Museum as a part of Complex Exchange: Jacob Lawrence's Great Migration.
Her current work, Black Like Me is touring inter/nationally and has been presented in Los Angeles, CA, Albany, NY, Vancouver, BC, Seoul, South Korea amongst others. Follow her on IG @jade_solomon_
Jumatatu Poe is a choreographer and performer based between Philadelphia and New York City who grew up dancing around the living room and at parties with his siblings and cousins.
Poe has produced dance and performance work independently, as well as in collaboration with idiosynCrazy productions, a company he founded in 2008 and now co-direct with Shannon Murphy. Most recently, the company serves as a resource to produce public dialogues around the integrations of art into society, and the social responsibility of the artist. Collaboration is often essential for his work, and for the past several years he has worked collaboratively with J- Sette artist Jermone Donte Beacham on a series of visual and performance works called Let ‘im Move You. Previously, he has danced with Marianela Boán, Silvana Cardell, devynn emory, Emmanuelle Hunyh, Tania Isaac, Kun- Yang Lin, C. Kemal Nance, Marissa Perel, Leah Stein, Keith Thompson, Kate Watson-Wallace, Reggie Wilson, Jesse Zaritt, and Kariamu Welsh (as a member of Kariamu & Company). As a performer, he also collaborates with Merián Soto. From 2009-2018, he was an Assistant Professor of Dance at Swarthmore College.
Poe has performed his work in various cities around the US and in Europe, and has received various awards including: a 2010-2011 Live Arts Brewery Fellowship (Philadelphia), 2010-2012 and 2017 annual Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Performance Grants, a 2011-2013 Community Education Center Residency Fellowship (Philadelphia), a 2012 Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship (Philadelphia), a 2013 NRW Tanzrecherche Fellowship (Germany), a 2013 New York Live Arts Studio Series residency with Jesse Zaritt (NYC), a 2016 Independence Fellowship (Philadelphia), a 2016 18th Street Arts Center creative residency (Santa Monica), a 2017 Rocky Dance Award (Philadelphia), a 2017 Sacatar Residency Fellowship (Bahia, Brazil), a 2017 MAP Fund award with Jermone Donte Beacham, a 2017 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant with Jermone Donte Beacham, a 2018 MANCC residency, a 2019 Queer|Art Prize for Let ‘im Move You: This Is a Formation (with Jermone Donte Beacham), three Swarthmore College Cooper Foundation grants for presenting other artists (Swarthmore, PA).
Adrienne Truscott’s work is hybrid and straddles lots of genres – choreography, stand-up comedy, drag/cabaret, writing and she’s half of The Wau Wau Sisters, a 15-year-long boundary- busting cabaret collaboration. She engages different forms of live performance that look, act, and intend differently and she consistently seeks out different environments/mandates for her work rather than relegating it to specific economic, social, aesthetic, or geographic contexts. She’s curious about how different modes of presentation (i.e., experimental, international, commercial, or illegal venues) interact with different forms (dance, cabaret, circus, comedy) and how that can upend assumptions that often accompany these forms and their target audiences, respectively. Her critically acclaimed Adrienne Truscott's Asking For: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else is considered a critical impetus to the evolving conversation about rape culture, continues to tour internationally and was recently filmed at Joe’s Pub for a documentary. She’s a Doris Duke Impact Award Artist (Dance) and a FCA grantee for Theater and Performance. She’s been presented by or performed at Sydney Opera House, The Moth, The Roundhouse, CBGB’s, PS122, The Kitchen, Danspace, Judson Memorial Church, MoMa among others. She’s appeared in the work of choreographers Sarah Michelson, David Neumann and Deborah Hay among others as well as Half-Straddle Theater Company and John Cameron Mitchell’s experimental film Shortbus. She’s an occasional writer for The Guardian and her essays have been published in two Australian anthologies. Shows currently on tour are THIS (2018 Bessie Nominee for Outstanding Production, Wild Bore (Green Room Award (AU)), Adrienne Truscott’s A One-Trick Pony. She’s currently working on new work with Le Gateau Chocolat (UK/AU), Split Britches, brokentalkers (IR) and a new solo piece about genius. Truscott has taught at Wesleyan University, Barnard College, Bard College, Princeton University and NYU and regularly mentors other solo artists.
Marianna Valencia, is a dance artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been presented by Danspace Project, American Realness, AUNTS, The Chocolate Factory, Performance Space, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and internationally in England, Norway, Macedonia, and Serbia. Valencia is a Whitney Biennial artist (2019), a Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer (2018), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient (2018), a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow (2014-15), a Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation grant recipient (2010-13) and a Movement Research GPS/Global Practice Sharing artist (2016/17). She is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). In New York she’s has held residencies at Chez Bushwick (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), ISSUE Project Room (2015), Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2016-18), Gibney Dance Center (2019), Movement Research (2019), and at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR (2018). As a performer, Valencia has worked with Lydia Okrent, Jules Gimbrone, Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, AK Burns, Em Rooney, robbinschilds, Kim Brandt, Morgan Bassichis, Fia Backstrom and MPA. She has published two books of performance texts in 2019 entitled "Album" (Wendy's Subway) and "Mariana Valencia's Bouquet" (3 Hole Press). Valencia holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006) with a concentration in dance and ethnography.
Allie Hankins is a Portland-based dancer and performance maker. She is an inaugural member of FLOCK, a dance center and creative home to Portland’s experimental dance artists spearheaded by Tahni Holt, and in 2013 she co-founded Physical Education, a critical and casual cooperative comprised of herself, keyon gaskin, Taka Yamamoto, and Lu Yim. Physical Education hosts open reading groups and lectures, curates performances, and teaches workshops nationally. Most recently, Allie has performed with Milka Djordjevich (LA), Morgan Thorson (Minneapolis), Julien Prévieux (Paris), and Ruairi Donovan (Ireland). Her recent pursuits include teaching step aerobics, her all-levels, queer-centric movement class TRANSCENDENTAEROBICOURAGE, and learning American Sign Language. She has been an Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, the Wassaic Project, and she will be in residence at the Ucross Foundation in April 2020.
About On the Boards
Now in its 40th year, On the Boards invests in leading contemporary performing artists near and far, and connects them to a diverse range of communities interested in forward-thinking art and ideas. We believe if we are successful in our work that we can grow our field, enrich peoples' lives, and contribute to civic and global dialogues.
We present contemporary performance work that pushes our audiences' boundaries, provokes discussion, engages new ideas, and connects adventurous art to our community.
We fulfill our mission through a series of programs, which include presenting innovative artists from the Northwest and beyond through a curated season of new commissions and existing work; a new lecture and studio visit series that brings curatorial voices to the PNW; and an annual festival of short performance, as well as a quarterly experimental performance series for local practitioners to show in-progress or short time-based works. We provide select local artists with residencies that include rehearsal space, development support, project management, dramaturgical and curatorial feedback, and advocacy in order to create new and exciting projects. Our publishing platform, OntheBoards.tv, is a one-of-its-kind portal that features HD performance films and contextual educational material to deepen audiences’ understanding of the field of contemporary performance.
Since its inception, On the Boards has featured seminal performances by artists including Laurie Anderson, Bill T. Jones, The Wooster Group, Spalding Gray, Dumb Type, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Sankai Juku, Gisèle Vienne, Bruno Beltrão, chelfitsch, Romeo Castellucci, John Jasperse, Jan Fabre, Back to Back Theatre, Faustin Linyekula, Mark Morris, Pat Graney, Dayna Hanson, Ahamefule J. Oluo, Reggie Watts, Zoe Scofield & Juniper Shuey, and Crystal Pite.